FLEXURAL BEHAVIOUR OF STRENGTHENED RC BEAMS WITH MULTI-DIRECTIONAL BASALT FIBRE - REINFORCED POLYMER COMPOSITES

The paper describes an experimental behaviour of the basalt fibre reinforced polymer composite by external strengthening to the concrete beams. The BFRP composite is wrapped at the bottom face of R.C beam as one layer, two layers, three layers and four layers. The different characteristics - are studied in - first crack load, ultimate load, tensile and compressive strain, cracks propagation, crack spacing and number of cracks etc. To - investigate, total of five beams size 100mmx 160mmx1700mm were cast. One beam is taken as control and others are strengthened with BFRP composite with layers. From this investigation, the first crack load is increased depending on the increment in layers from 6.79% to 47.98%. Similarly, the ultimate load carrying capacity is increased from 5.66% to 20%. The crack's spacing is also reduced with an increase in the number of layers