Shear Strength of FRP Reinforced Concrete Members with Stirrups

The mechanisms of shear transfer in fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) reinforced concrete members with shear reinforcement are discussed, and it is explained how these were used to derive the shear design provisions of the Canadian standard for design and construction of building structures with FRPs. Subsequently, the accuracy of these provisions and the validity of their underlying assumptions are assessed by comparing the predicted shear strengths of over three hundred FRP-reinforced beams with their corresponding experimental values. Although the focus of the paper is mainly on beams with FRP shear reinforcement, for completeness beams with and without shear reinforcement are analyzed. It is determined that the mean and standard deviation of the ratio of the test to predicted shear strength of the beams without shear reinforcement are 1.16 and 0.24, respectively, whereas those of beams with shear reinforcement are 1.15 and 0.23. The strengths of these beams are also computed using the recommendations and it is shown that overall recently proposed Canadian method yields more accurate and consistent results. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.