Study on Damaged Reinforced Concrete Beams Strengthened with Basalt Fiber Polymer Sheets

Abstract

In practical concrete structures, once reinforced concrete beams serve in case of over cracking or are even damaged due to sudden overloading, it is necessary to repair or strengthened the damaged members for purpose of restoring the structural capacities and keeping the structures working well. At present FRP strengthening technique is one of the most accepted methods available in civil engineering. This paper particularly presents a new FRP material，basal fiber, which is applied to strengthen flexural behaviors of reinforced concrete beams suffering from different amplitudes of cracking damage. Herein, total 4 reinforced concrete beams were tested including one reference beam and three beams strengthened with basalt fiber polymer sheets. The three strengthened beams were preloaded to an expected load and then strengthen by basalt fibers under loading. The test parameters are involved in different pre-loads and layers of basalt fiber sheets. During test some flexural behaviors were obtained in terms of variation of strain in concrete, steel bar and basalt fiber sheet, flexural deflection, collapse loads and the failure modes as well as cracking properties of R.C beams strengthened with basalt fiber sheets. The results of test indicated that flexural behaviors of the beams strengthened under loading with basalt fiber polymer could be improved in different degree with varied initial flexural moment and numbers of basalt fiber.