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Title: Flexural Behaviors of Glass Fiber-Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) Reinforced Engineered Cementitious Composite Beams

Author(s): Victor C. Li and Shuxin Wang

Publication: Materials Journal

Volume: 99

Issue: 1

Appears on pages(s): 11-21

Keywords: beam; ductility; reinforcement; shear.

DOI: 10.14359/11311

Date: 1/1/2002

Abstract:
Broad applications of fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) reinforcement are hindered by its elastic brittle behavior, which results in reduced structural ductility. In addition, due to the lower modulus of elasticity, serviceability considerations such as deflection and crack width control present serious challenges to designers. This paper reports new means to address these issues by introducing engineered cementitious composite (ECC), which is designed based on micromechanics principles and exhibits higher tensile and shear ductility, to replace brittle concrete matrix. Three series, totaling 16 GFRP reinforced beams with various shear span-depth ratios and longitudinal reinforcement ratios, were tested. The results reveal that, under the same reinforcement configurations, ECC beams exhibit significant increases in flexural performance in terms of ductility, load-carrying capacity, shear resistance, and damage tolerance (such as crack width or spalling) compared with the counterpart high-strength concrete (HSC) beam. The extent of improvement strongly depended on the failure mode; that is, when the limit state was dominated by matrix behavior, more significant improvement was observed. Moreover, ECC beams without shear reinforcement demonstrate better performance than HSC beams with dense steel stirrups, which suggests that elimination of shear reinforcement is feasible when the concrete matrix is replaced by ECC.