The effect of transverse and flexural reinforcement on deflection and cracking of GFRP bar reinforced concrete beams

Abstract

This paper investigates the flexural behavior, deflection, and cracking of concrete beams reinforced with GFRP bars. For this purpose, 20 simply supported concrete beams with the cross-section of 250 × 250 mm and length of 2200 mm were constructed and tested. The parameters studied in this research are the amount and arrangement of transverse and flexural reinforcement. The results show that increasing the amount of transverse reinforcement of similar beams results in a significant increase in load-carrying capacity and a decrease in the crack widths and mid-span deflection until service load. Moreover, applying a small-diameter transverse reinforcement under the same reinforcement ratio showed a stronger effect on increasing the load-carrying capacity. Furthermore, using a small-diameter transverse and tensile reinforcement led to a higher effect on decreasing the crack widths. The average experimental-to-predicted load-carrying capacity ratio of beams with high flexural reinforcement ratio is slightly more than that of beams with low flexural reinforcement ratio.