Reinforced Geopolymer Concrete Beams Research Articles

The Influence of Shear Connector Numbers on The Flexural Characteristics of Composite Geopolymer Reinforced Concrete Beams With Small Transverse Web Openings

Geopolymer concrete is a sustainable alternative to conventional Portland cement-based concrete, utilizes industrial by-products like fly ash and slag. Renowned for its reduced carbon footprint and exceptional durability, geopolymer concrete is gaining global recognition in eco-friendly construction practices. Steel composite reinforced geopolymer concrete beams combine the strength of steel with the sustainability of geopolymer concrete, offering a sturdy structural solution. This collaborative approach results in a composite material with excellent crack resistance and durability, harnessing the advantageous properties of both steel and geopolymer concrete. These beams present a promising option in construction by striking a balance between structural performance and environmental considerations through the incorporation of geopolymer technology. The focus of the current study is to investigate the impact of steel connectors on the flexural behavior of composite reinforced geopolymer concrete beams that have transverse web opening through experimental methods. The experimental program involves casting four geopolymer beams, with one being a traditional geopolymer-reinforced concrete beam (Control). The remaining three specimens are composite reinforced geopolymer concrete beams, each featuring a bottom 5 mm steel plate with six, twelve, and eighteen connectors near each support. The beams share common dimensions, with a total length of 1600mm, a height of 250mm, and a width of 180mm. The results showed that increasing the number of connectors near supports increased the resulted flexural behavior of beams. Such connectors increased the first crack load from 6.67% to 42.22% while the service load increased from 16.22% to 36.20%. the load carrying capacity was also increased from 12.00% to 24.80%. Finally, the mode of failure was moved from traditional tension failure to concrete crushing.

Experimental and Analytical Investigations on Shear Performance of Ambient-Cured Reinforced Geopolymer Concrete Beams

Geopolymer concrete (GPC) has emerged as a sustainable alternative to ordinary Portland cement concrete (OPCC) as GPC significantly reduces embodied carbon dioxide emissions. This study compared the shear behavior of reinforced OPCC beams and GPC beams of the same cross-section and compressive strength. The study tested nine beams under three-point bending to evaluate the effects of concrete type and shear span on the shear strength. The results showed that OPCC and GPC beams exhibited relatively similar reduction rates in the shear strength with increasing a/d ratios, while the failure mode shifted from shear in OPCC beams to shear-flexure in GPC beams. The maximum deflection of GPC beams significantly increased with increasing a/d ratios. Moreover, empirical shear strength equations, intended for OPCC beams in various design codes, underestimated the shear strength of GPC beams by about 11.0-26.9% at the a/d ratio of 4.3 but significantly underestimated the shear strengths of GPC beams by 77% at lower a/d ratios of 1.6 and 2.9. Therefore, modifications are proposed to the existing design OPCC shear strength equations to significantly improve the prediction accuracy for the shear strength of GPC beams.

Behavior of Reinforced Geopolymer Concrete Beams under Repeated Load

Behavior of Reinforced Geopolymer Concrete Beams under Repeated Load

Flexural behavior of steel fiber reinforced slag- based geopolymer concrete beams

This study includes tested nine reinforced concrete beams. It’s designed to fail in flexural under two-point load. All beams are classified according to the type of concrete and the percentage of PVA into three groups. The first group including four reinforced geopolymer concrete beams with percent of PVA was 0.2 %; second group including four reinforced geopolymer concrete beams with percent of PVA was 0.75 % and third group including one reinforced normal concrete beam. The results showed when comparing the geopolymer concrete beam with the normal concrete beam, noticed that the ultimate strength is equivalent to many times the normal concrete. The best percentage for improving the ultimate load for beam NO.6 (GSSB10) where the percentage of increase was 132% this beam is reinforced by steel bars 2ɸ12mm at top and 2ɸ16mm at bottom. As for the other beams, the percentage increase in ultimate load was for beam NO.1 (46%), beam NO.2 (99%), beam NO.3 (13%), beam NO.4 (60%), beam NO.5 (58%), beam NO.7 (32%) and beam NO.8 (66%). The maximum deflection in all samples was high compared with the normal concrete, where the ultimate deflection reached 30 mm, while in the normal concrete it was 9.65 mm.

Flexural behavior of reinforced geo-polymer concrete beams at ambient temperature

AbstractAn experimental study was carried out on geo-polymer and reinforced concrete beams to evaluate the flexural behavior of the beams for the structural grade of M30 concrete. The results show that the geo-polymer concrete beams exhibit similar flexural strength when compared to reinforced concrete beams. The split tensile strength, stiffness characters, the energy capacity and ductility relationship were also found with satisfactory results. The deflection and the stiffness degradation at the salient stages were found to be similar and thus the geo-polymer concrete beams find a good alternative to reinforced concrete beams under flexural behavior.

Experimental Investigation and Flexural behavior of Reinforced Geo polymer Concrete Beam by RCA

This research report presents the study on material characteristics of GPC by using natural aggregate and Recycled Coarse Aggregate. Experiments were conducted on the effect of variation of alkaline solution and different molarities on the mechanical properties of GPC. The alkaline liquid used for the present study was sodium silicate and sodium hydroxide solution with varying ratios of 2, 2.5 and 3. The molarities chosen for the sodiumhydroxidesolutionwere8M, 10Mand14M.Thetestspecimenswere150mmsizecubesand100x200mmcylindersheat-cured at 60 Cinanoven. The compressive strength was about 18to39 MP a and split tensile strength was in the range of3to3.8MParespectively.In this investigation on GPC using RCA, a total of 9 mixes were cast and tested, out of which three were conventional concrete mixes and six GPC mixes having varying combinations of fly ash, GGBS and RCA. The test specimens were 100mm size cubesand100x200mmcylinderscuredat90°Cinanovenfor18hours.Furthsize 150mm GPC cube specimens were cured at ambient temperature conditions. The studies showed that the compressive strength and spilt tensile strength of different mixes decreased with the increase in the percentage of recycled coarse aggregates.

Structural behavior of reinforced geopolymer concrete beams – A review

A potential novelconstructionmaterial that is relativelyeco-friendly in manufacturing and has a comparatively low carbon footprint is geopolymer concrete (GPC). GPC is a largely unexplored topic in the literature due to its novelty as a material, particularly in terms of itsstructural behaviour. Reinforced concrete (RC) beams are the most common concrete application in the construction industry. Therefore, this review study intends to provide a greater understanding of GPC by summarizing and discussing the most updated data on the structural performance of reinforced geopolymer concrete (RGPC) beams. The evaluation highlights the flexural and shear behaviour of RC beams made with GPC and compared with those of ordinary Portland cement concrete (OPCC). The reported literature demonstrated that the structural behaviour of RGPC beams is comparable to that of conventional OPCC beams. Further, the failure mode of RGPC beams in flexure and shear was nearly identical to that of OPCC beams. Review of the literature showed that GPC beams might be employed safely with the existing standards. However, to assure its viability in the industry, full-scale investigations on the structural behaviour are required for mass use in a variety of application areas and to promote cleaner and sustainable choices in the construction industry. Overall, this review offers guidance for researchers and civil engineers in conducting future studies on GPC.

Studies on the mechanical and durability performance of textile reinforced geopolymer concrete beams

The steel reinforcements used in structural elements are prone to corrosion due to adverse environmental effects. Hence, in recent years, the development of sustainable materials to replace steel reinforcement in concrete has been under research. In this paper, the mechanical and durability characteristics of Geopolymer Concrete (GC) and Epoxy-coated Carbon (EC) yarn against chemical attack were investigated. Tension tests were conducted on EC yarns immersed in acid, sulfate, marine water, and alkaline solution over an exposure period of 1 year. The test results reveal that better durability was achieved for GC specimens compared to cement concrete (CC) specimens in terms of water absorption, acid resistance, sulfate resistance, marine water attack, and chloride diffusion. Compressive strength and flexural strength obtained were 2.6–7.7 times and 1.65–2.36 times higher in GC compared to CC after immersion in various chemical solutions for 6 months. The chemical resistance of EC yarns over an exposure period of 1 year was measured with respect to loss in tensile strength and the reduction in strength was obtained as 29.6% for EC yarns immersed in acid solution, 14.71% in sulfate solution, 7.06% in alkali, and 3.82% in marine water. The study also investigated the flexural behavior of Textile Reinforced Geopolymer Concrete (TRGC) beams (100 × 100 × 500 mm) subjected to monotonic loading. The effectiveness of textile yarn spacing and the number of carbon textile layers to improve the load-bearing behavior of GC beams were evaluated. The reinforcing benefits of TRGC can be confirmed from the load-deflection graph in terms of ultimate load-carrying capacity, post-peak behavior, and failure mode. An energy absorption capacity of 80.06% was found for TRGC-4 L beams compared to TRGC-1 L beam specimens (43.76%), i.e., TRGC specimens with 4 layers showed improved strength and ductility compared to one layer of carbon textile. The failure surface of the TRGC sample was examined using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), and fiber-matrix interaction was identified. Hence, despite the high cost of carbon yarn, TRGC can be used for special applications where corrosion protection and durability are controlling parameters.

Behaviour of Hybrid Fiber Reinforced Geopolymer Concrete Beams under Flexural Loading

This paper presents the behaviour of GPC beams with and without fiber under flexural loading. The work is presented in two parts. In the first part tests were conducted for mechanical properties of plain and hybrid fiber reinforced Geopolymer concrete to determine maximum strength characteristics of concrete. In the second part of the program two types of under-reinforced beams were cast with plain GPC and hybrid fiber reinforced GPC (HFRGPC) and tested under two points loading. The percentage of tensile rebar ratio is kept constant for two types of beams. The hybrid fiber reinforced GPC is prepared with 1.5%(1%Steel+0.5% Polypropylene) of fibers and used to cast the under reinforced beams .The cast specimens are tested after a specified curing period to determine first crack load, ultimate load, load-deflection behaviour and crack patterns. The results are compared with the theoretical values. From the test results, the fiber volume fraction has a compelling effect on the cracking load, ultimate load, crack pattern and failure mode. The flexural behaviour of the beams including the induced cracks, failure pattern, load deflection capacity and ductility index were compared. The ductility index of hybrid fiber reinforced beams is greater than that of GPC beams. The HFRGPC beams showed superior performance than that of GPC beams for parameters considered in this experimental study.

The study of force-resistance of reinforced geopolymer concrete beam

During the recent decades, the development of geopolymer concrete technology towards to produce an alternative construction material solution for replacing the Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) concrete. Compared to traditional concrete, the products using geopolymer material can reduce the significant amount of carbon footprint and positively impact the environment. This study demonstrated that the flexural force-resistance of Geopolymer concrete (GPC) is higher than the OPC concrete, especially the higher flexural strength about 20% to 30%. Meanwhile, the Poisson's ratio and elasticity modulus of geopolymer concrete is equivalent to OPC concrete.

Nonlinear Analysis of Reinforced Geopolymer Concrete Beams

To decarbonise the current construction sector and meet the global net-zero target, there is a pressing need to develop an environmentally friendly alternative to Portland cement concrete. Alkali activated and geopolymer concrete have much to offer in this regard. At present, however, there is limited study on the behaviours of alkali activated structural members, particularly on flexural members, which encompass most practical design situations. This paper presents a database of 37 tests on slender alkali activated and geopolymer concrete beams available in the literature, with the aim to investigate the flexural strengths of this alternative concrete when used as a structural member. In addition, the results of nonlinear finite element analyses on fourteen reinforced geopolymer concrete beams are presented to highlight key influencing factors governing the behaviour and failure of flexural members. Of particular interest is to study the influence of reinforcement ratio, compressive strength, and material brittleness on the overall strength and ductility. Overall, it is shown that the flexural response of geopolymer concrete beams under short-term loading is comparable to that of ordinary reinforced concrete beams.

Numerical and theoretical analysis of FRP reinforced geopolymer concrete beams

The current paper aimed to numerically and theatrically evaluate the flexural performance of polymer bars reinforced geopolymer concrete (FRP-GPC) beams based on applying numerical and theoretical investigations. The numerical study incorporates developing nonlinear finite element models, using ABAQUS software, validated with the data available in the literature. The developed model was then utilised to implement parametric studies for the parameters governing the structural behaviour of FRP-GPC beams, including compressive strength, FRP reinforcement type, shear reinforcement ratio, and shear span-to-depth (a/h) ratio. The results indicated to a reasonable agreement between the FE results and experiments collected from the literature concerning failure mode, failure load, and the load-deflection response. The statistical calculations showed that the mean, standard deviation, and the coefficient of variation between the measured and the FE failure loads are 1.03, 5.4%, and 5.3%, respectively. The FE results indicated that the compressive strength plays a considerable role in the load capacity for the specimens made without any web reinforcement, unlike those supported with web reinforcements. Moreover, the absence of web reinforcement and low a/h ratios resulted in a shear behaviour, which is more likely to be controlled by compressive strength rather than other parameters. The FE results also indicated that the web reinforcement ratio of 0.7% was sufficient to avoid the occurrence of shear failure, and therefore, the increase of the shear reinforcement beyond this level seems to have no considerable impact on the load capacity. Besides, the theoretical study included assessing the Canadian (CSA S806–12) and American (ACI-440–1R-15) codes to evaluate their performance in predicting the loading capacity of FRP-GPC beams investigated in the current study. The findings indicated that both codes provided conservative predictions when they are applied on FRP GPC beams, giving a mean value of 0.66 for the calculated-to-the FE results. Therefore, developing the existing design standards of ACI-440–1R-15 and Canadian CSA S806–12 is strongly recommended to improve the accuracy of applying these codes on FRP GPC beams.

Flexural Behaviour of Reinforced Geopolymer Concrete Incorporated with Hazardous Heavy Metal Waste Ash and Glass Powder

The flexural behavior of Incinerated Bio-Medical Waste Ash (IBWA) – Ground Granulated Blast Furnace Slag (GGBS) based Reinforced Geopolymer Concrete (RGPC) beams with Waste Glass Powder (WGP) as fine aggregate is explored in this research. The fine aggregate (M-Sand) is substituted by varying the waste glass powder as 0 percent, 5 percent, 10 percent, 15 percent, 20 percent, 25 percent, 30 percent, 35 percent, 40 percent, 45 percent, and 50 percent, and the mixture is cured under atmospheric curing. The impact of the WGP weight percentage on the flexural behavior of GPC beams is analyzed. The conduct of RGPC beams varies from that of ordinary Portland Concrete (OPC) beams, which is defined and examined. Deflection, ductility factor, flexural strength, and toughness index were measured as flexural properties for beams. In contrast to the reference beams, the RGPC beams containing 50% Waste Glass Powder as fine aggregate demonstrated a major increase in cracking resistance, serviceability, and ductility, according to the experimental finding. The RGPC beam without WGP ended in failure with a brittle manner whereas those beams with WGP encountered ductile failure. The RGPC beams' load ability improved by up to 50% as the weight percentage of WGP was enhanced.

Analytical modeling and experimental validation of balanced reinforced geopolymer concrete beams

Structural analysis is used to assess the behavior of engineering structures under the application of various loads. Commonly used structural analysis methods include analytical, experimental and numerical methods. The finite element method has become very popular among engineers and researchers as it is considered to be one of the best methods for solving complex engineering problems efficiently. There are various finite element software packages such as ATENA, ABAQUS, Hypermesh, Nastran and ANSYS to solve the engineering problems. Hence, in the present study ANSYS (Analysis System), finite element software is used for solving the reinforced concrete beams. The results thus obtained are verified with the experiment carried out. The experimental work highlights the study on flexural behavior of conventional and geopolymer reinforced beams with different grades of concrete namely M-30, M-40 and M-50. The test specimens was 100 x 200 x 2000 mm reinforced beams cured at room temperature. The alkaline solution used for present study was the combination of sodium silicate and sodium hydroxide solution with the ratio 2.50. The molarity used for the preparation of geoploymer solution was 12. The beams considered for the study were designed as balanced reinforced sections with percentage of reinforcement varying in the range of 1.45, 2.10 and 2.40. It was observed that the experimental values of reinforced concrete beams were in par with the results obtained with ANSYS modeling.

Nonlinear finite element study on element size effects in alkali-activated fly ash based reinforced geopolymer concrete beam

The practical application of geopolymer concrete structure is getting attention due to its environmentally friendly characteristics. This paper presents non-linear Finite Element Analysis (FEA) on the element size effect in reinforced geopolymer concrete beam. Element size significantly influences the failure mechanism of structure especially in ductile fracture of reinforced concrete. The critical failure strain, crack patterns and orientations are mesh sensitive in finite element analysis for reinforced concrete structure. The impact of the element size on behavioral aspects of reinforced geopolymer concrete beam such as the crack pattern, ultimate load capacity and load-displacement behavior studies discussed along with a formerly conducted experimental data. Further validation of FEA is carried out using the theoretical flexural strength of the beam according to Euro code 2. Results show that element size has a significant effect in capturing the cracking pattern of reinforced geopolymer concrete beam. FEA result from the positive principal strain contour confirms that the fine mesh size captured the tension, the diagonal shear and compression cracks, even the band of surrounding cracks around the bottom reinforcement, precisely as compared to coarse meshes. It has been observed that the utilization of fine mesh with 10 mm element size predicts the experimental and theoretical ultimate load by 99.46% and 96.11%, respectively. Coarse mesh having 25 mm element size shows slightly higher variation in predicting the experimental and theoretical ultimate load by 93.75% and 90.42%, respectively. In addition, fine mesh confirms the experimental mid-span vertical deflection by 99.44% however the coarse mesh predicts in significant deviation by estimating 48.04% of the experimental mid-span vertical deflection. Furthermore, the ductile failure of the beam was accurately traced by the fine mesh.

Improving the structural performance of reinforced geopolymer concrete incorporated with hazardous heavy metal waste ash

Purpose Demand for Geopolymer concrete (GPC) has increased recently because of its many benefits, including being environmentally sustainable, extremely tolerant to high temperature and chemical attacks in more dangerous environments. Like standard concrete, GPC also has low tensile strength and deformation capacity. This paper aims to analyse the utilization of incinerated bio-medical waste ash (IBWA) combined with ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS) in reinforced GPC beams and columns. Medical waste was produced in the health-care industry, specifically in hospitals and diagnostic laboratories. GGBS is a form of industrial waste generated by steel factories. The best option to address global warming is to reduce the consumption of Portland cement production and promote other types of cement that were not a pollutant to the environment. Therefore, the replacement in ordinary Portland cement construction with GPC is a promising way of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. GPC was produced due to an alkali-activated polymeric reaction between alumina-silicate source materials and unreacted aggregates and other materials. Industrial pollutants such as fly ash and slag were used as raw materials. Design/methodology/approach Laboratory experiments were performed on three different proportions (reinforced cement concrete [RCC], 100% GGBS as an aluminosilicate source material in reinforced geopolymer concrete [GRGPC] and 30% replacement of IBWA as an aluminosilicate source material for GGBS in reinforced geopolymer concrete [IGRGPC]). The cubes and cylinders for these proportions were tested to find their compressive strength and split tensile strength. In addition, beams (deflection factor, ductility factor, flexural strength, degradation of stiffness and toughness index) and columns (load-carrying ability, stress-strain behaviour and load-deflection behaviours) of reinforced geopolymer concrete (RGPC) were studied. Findings As shown by the results, compared to Reinforced Cement Concrete (RCC) and 100% GGBS based Reinforced Geopolymer Concrete (GRGPC), 30% IBWA and 70% GGBS based Reinforced Geopolymer Concrete (IGRGPC) (30% IBWA–70% GGBS reinforced geo-polymer concrete) cubes, cylinders, beams and columns exhibit high compressive strength, tensile strength, flexural strength, load-carrying ability, ultimate strength, stiffness, ductility and deformation capacity. Originality/value All the results were based on the experiments done in this research. All the result values obtained in this research are higher than the theoretical values.

Flexural behavior of reinforced geopolymer concrete beams with recycled coarse aggregates

Geopolymer recycled aggregate concrete (GRAC) is a new green construction material, which uses geopolymer as the binder and recycled concrete as aggregates. To compare the flexural performance of GRAC and ordinary recycled aggregate concrete (RAC) beams, static loading tests were conducted on seven GRAC beams and three RAC beams. The effects of the replacement ratio of recycled aggregates (RAs), the replacement patterns, and the reinforcement ratio on the flexural behavior of GRAC beams are evaluated. The test data show that the replacement ratio has no significant effect on the cracking pattern, failure mode, or bending capacity of GRAC beams, but the replacement pattern does have an effect. Under a given replacement ratio, replacing only the larger fraction of natural aggregates (NA) with RA improves the concrete strength and crack resistance of both RAC and GRAC beams, compared to that using same replacement percentage for all fractions. Due to the lower elastic modulus and strength of GRAC prepared in this study, the GRAC beams have lower height of neutral axis and greater deflection than RAC beams at the same load level and possess slightly lower cracking load, bending capacity, and ductility. The bending capacity of GRAC beams can be predicted by the formulas proposed for ordinary reinforced concrete beams in the Chinese code GB50010-2010, ACI 318-11, or BS EN 1992-1-1:2004 codes, but the safety margin is generally lower than that of ordinary reinforced concrete beams.

Multifunctional behavior of CNT- and CB-based composite beams

The investigation was performed on the self-sensing behavior of reinforced geopolymer concrete beams produced at ambient curing. Prior to investigation, carbon nanotubes (CNT) and carbon black (CB) were used in small-scale geopolymer specimens at different ratios and the electrical properties of the composites were tailored in the favor of self-sensing functionality. After characterization of mechanical and electrical properties, 150 × 150 × 750 mm3 (width × height × length) self-sensing reinforced geopolymer beams were produced with a span/effective depth ratio of 2.0. An experimental procedure was designed to obtain a mixed failure mode of shear and flexural. Engineering properties of large-scale beams were evaluated in terms of flexural strength, deflection capacities, initial stiffness and ductility ratios with the proposed design. Simultaneously, self-sensing assessments were performed continuously by the evaluation of relative factor in electrical resistivity of geopolymer beams at different loading levels. Microstructural and experimental results revealed that CNT-based beams significantly enhanced the load-carrying capacity and ductility that provided a high amount of energy dissipation capacity compared to CB-based beams. CNT-based beams exhibited 107.7%, 188.9%, 217% and 51% higher relative factor in electrical resistivity compared to CB-based beams at 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% of total applied load, respectively. Results indicate that applied load was continuously sensed by all geopolymer beams although CNT-based beams were more responsive to change of strain compared to CB-based beams at earlier stages of loading.

Experimental investigations on the structural behaviour of reinforced geopolymer beams produced from recycled construction materials

Concrete requires a vast amount of aggregate and cement production. Although there are some efforts in the literature to reduce the amount of Portland cement in the concrete mixture to lessen the greenhouse gas release, a limited number of studies were conducted to investigate the possibility of using this geopolymer mixtures to serve as a structural component. Therefore, this study firstly aimed to produce geopolymer concrete from construction and demolition waste-based precursors, including masonry units (red clay brick, roof tile, hollow brick, etc.) and glass. In addition, recycled aggregates produced from the concrete waste portion of the CDW were used to obtain 100% recycled construction material on the scale of the binder and aggregate phase. Then, this study investigated the possible use of this proposed geopolymer concrete to produce structural components that perform similar to conventional concrete. Therefore, the structural properties of reinforced geopolymer concrete beams produced from the recycled construction demolition wastes were evaluated in this study by conducting laboratory experiments. To this end, bending tests were performed on reinforced conventional concrete beam specimens and reinforced geopolymer concrete beam specimens. The test observations clearly showed that construction demolition waste could be recycled to produce new constructional components, considering its advantage of promoted sustainability.

The structural behaviours of steel reinforced geopolymer concrete beams: An experimental and numerical investigation

The environmental impact of traditional Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) concrete is a significant problem that requires urgent solutions in the construction industry. The development of geopolymer concrete is one of the most significant breakthroughs in the process of replacing OPC concrete. Through comprehensive experimental and numerical analyses, this study investigates the structural behaviours of large-scale steel reinforced geopolymer concrete beams (GCBs) made from low-calcium fly ash and ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS). Firstly, small-scale experiments were carried out to investigate the effects of water/binder and activator/binder ratios on the mechanical properties of geopolymer concrete (e.g. elastic modulus, compressive strength, direct tensile strength). The experimental results show that the mechanical properties of geopolymer concrete increases with increasing the activator/binder ratio and decreasing the water/binder ratio. Secondly, three groups of GCBs with different steel reinforcement ratios (D1-0.41%, D2-0.75%, and D3-1.5%) were made and four-point bending tests were conducted. The same mix proportion (water/binder of 0.45 and activator/binder of 0.08) with the compressive strength of 39.1 MPa, elastic modulus of 32.0 GPa, and the direct tensile strength of 3.06 MPa, was used for the three groups. The obtained moment–curvature results, which consists of three distinct stages (linear elastic, tension cracking of GCBs, and steel yielding), show that the three groups (D1-D3) behave in a ductile manner. Moreover, the moment capacity of GCBs increases when the steel reinforcement ratio increases (D1-21.5 kNm, D2-44.2 kNm and D3-83.6 kNm). Finally, nonlinear, three-dimensional finite element (FE) analysis based on the damage plasticity constitutive law was developed to capture and validate the structural behaviour of GCBs from the experiments. Numerical results indicate that the developed FE models accurately capture the structural behaviours (moment–curvature and cracking behaviour) of GCBs. The discrepancies between the numerical and experimental moment–curvature results are from 1 to 5% for the tensional cracking and yielding points. Therefore, the developed FE models can be used as an effective tool for the further development and design of geopolymer concrete structures.