BEHAVIOUR OF TWO-WAY FIBROUS HIGH STRENGTH CONCRETE SLABS REINFORCED WITH GFRP BARS UNDER UNIFORMLY DISTRIBUTED LOADS

The replacement of conventional steel reinforcement with glass-fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) bars is investigated to overcome the problem of corrosion of steel reinforcement which causes most of the failures in concrete structures, especially in harsh environments. However, the lower modulus of elasticity of GFRP bars and their non-yielding characteristics results in large deflection and wide cracks in GFRP reinforced concrete members. Hence, there is an essential need for a suitable design philosophy and for methods that can provide a reliable estimate of such behaviour. The behaviour is evaluated of simply supported concrete slabs reinforced with GFRP bars and subjected to uniformly distributed loads. The slabs had sizes 800x450x50 or 70 mm with different reinforcement and steel fiber ratios. This research investigates the flexural and shears limit states of slabs, including pre-cracking behaviour, cracking pattern, ultimate crack width, deflection, failure mode, and ultimate loads. The information presented is valuable for the development of design guidelines for FRP-reinforced concrete structures. Three dimensional finite element analyses by using ANSYS\(R) software is performed as verification of all experimental slabs.