Reinforced Concrete Elements Strengthened by Pre-stressed Fibre-reinforced Polymer (FRP)
Maxim Yashchuk, Dmitry Smerdov
Abstract
Goals. To carry out experimental studies of enforcing the reinforced concrete bending elements with pre-stressed composite materials. Research Methods. Rectangular reinforced concrete elements enforced with polymer composite materials were used as laboratory samples, the measurement was carried out using strain gauges and analog indicators. Research results. A laboratory research program has been developed. The technology for enforcing the reinforced concrete samples by using pre-stressing of fibre-reinforced polymer has been developed. The results of experimental studies regarding the bearing capacity of laboratory reinforced concrete samples enforced with pre-stressed fibre-reinforced polymer are presented. The new enforcement technology was developed. It implies using a device patented by the authors, and the fundamentally new patterns for destruction of samples are presented. The impact of a various strip tension degree (12 kN compared with 6 kN) was analyzed, a difference of 31 % was determined for bearing capacity and 17% for the cracking resistance of reinforced concrete samples. Conclusions. The conducted analysis of the experimental study allows concluding that reinforcement with pre-stressed composite materials (bands) allows increasing the strength of the samples up to 70%, and also increases cracking resistance by 80 %.