Experimental investigation and analysis of pure bending plastic hinge zone in hybrid beams reinforced with high reinforcement ratio under static loads

Abstract

This article investigates the formation of plastic region length and parameters affecting the region length in hybrid glass fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP)/steel reinforced concrete (RC) beams by using finite element method based on the ATENA software. Totally nine concrete beams with dimension of 150 × 250 × 2700 mm reinforced with hybrid GFRP/steel reinforcement were tested in four-point bending. Tested beams reinforced with an effective reinforcement ratio between 0.57% and 1.18%. The tested outcomes along with the experimental data on behaviour of GFRP/steel RC beams available in the literature were collected for validating the 2D FE model. The comparison results confirm a good agreement between the experimental and numerical data. The experimental results of this study show that the effect of the ratio of steel to GFRP bars and the amount of longitudinal reinforcement are the main factors controlling the strength and failure modes of beams. The parametric study using FE model is conducted to evaluate the effect of effective reinforcement ratio, yield strength of steel, concrete compressive strength, ratio of elastic modulus of GFRP and steel bars, and ratio of shear span to effective height of section on spread of the length of plastic hinge region of GFRP/steel RC beams.

Keywords:

• GFRP bars
• hybrid RC beams
• modelling
• plastic hinge

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.