Experimental and numerical investigation on compressive and flexural behavior of structural steel tubular beams strengthened with AFRP composites

Abstract

Aramid Fiber Reinforced Polymer (AFRP) composites provide a companionable and beneficial technique to strengthen structures and noticeable advantages in terms of fire and heat resistance and vapor permeability. AFRP also improves the corrosion resistivity of the structural members, and it delays the buckling. These characteristics of AFRP materials have been catching attention of the technical community to study the mechanical behavior to define comprehensive strengthening design guidelines. This research work studied the effect of AFRP on a steel beam with five types of strengthening and without strengthening pattern. Several tests were carried out to find the compressive and flexural behavior of structure considering with strengthening and without strengthening. From the experimental result, it can be concluded that the load carrying capacity and stiffness of structure considerably enhanced due to external bonding of normal modulus AFRP. The wrapping of AFRP effectively delayed the local buckling and punching for the compressive and flexural loading, respectively. Then, the beam was modeled by using ANSYS 16.0 to authenticate the experimental results and the numerical results such as deflection and maximum load carrying capacity for the different patterns of strengthening quite agreed with the experimental results. Finally, this study concluded with showing different experimental failure modes and comparison made with the numerical results. It is expected that the outcome of this research will be of significant help for the strengthening of the structure.