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Fiber reinforced polymers (FRPs) are considered to be a promising alternative to steel reinforcement, especially in concrete structures subjected to an aggressive environment or to the effects of electromagnetic fields. Although attempts to develop effective reinforcement have been followed, the application of FRPs remains limited by the solution to simple structural problems that mainly appear due to the absence of design codes, significant variation in the material properties of FRP composites and limited knowledge gained by engineers as regards the application aspects of FRP composites and structural mechanics of concrete elements reinforced with FRPs. To fill the latter gap, the current state-of-the-art report is dedicated to present recent achievements in FRPs applying practice to a broad engineers’ community. The report also revises the manufacturing process, material properties, the application area and design peculiarities of concrete elements reinforced with FRP composites. Along the focus on internal reinforcement, the paper overviews recent practices of applying FRP reinforced concrete (RC) elements in structural engineering. The review highlights the main problems restricting the application of FRPs in building industry and reveals the problematic issues (related to the material properties of the FRP) important for designing RC following the formulation of targets for further research.

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This study investigates the mechanical behavior of steel fiber-reinforced concrete (SFRC) beams internally reinforced with steel bars and externally bonded with carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) sheets fixed by adhesive and hybrid jointing techniques. In particular, attention is paid to the load resistance and failure modes of composite beams. The steel fibers were used to avoiding the rip-off failure of the concrete cover. The CFRP sheets were fixed to the concrete surface by epoxy adhesive as well as combined with various configurations of small-diameter steel pins for mechanical fastening to form a hybrid connection. Such hybrid jointing techniques were found to be particularly advantageous in avoiding brittle debonding failure, by promoting progressive failure within the hybrid joints. The use of CFRP sheets was also effective in suppressing the localization of the discrete cracks. The development of the crack pattern was monitored using the digital image correlation method. As revealed from the image analyses, with an appropriate layout of the steel pins, brittle failure of the concrete-carbon fiber interface could be effectively prevented. Inverse analysis of the moment-curvature diagrams was conducted, and it was found that a simplified tension-stiffening model with a constant residual stress level at 90% of the strength of the SFRC is adequate for numerically simulating the deformation behavior of beams up to the debonding of the CFRP sheets.

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Although the efficiency of steel fibres for improving mechanical properties (cracking resistance and failure toughness) of the concrete has been broadly discussed in the literature, the number of studies dedicated to the fibre effect on structural behaviour of the externally bonded elements is limited. This experimental study investigates the influence of steel fibres on the failure character of concrete elements strengthened with external carbon fibre reinforced polymer sheets. The elements were subjected to different loading conditions. The test data of four ties and eight beams are presented. Different materials were used for the internal bar reinforcement: in addition to the conventional steel, high-grade steel and glass fibre reinforced polymer bars were also considered. The experimental results indicated that the fibres, by significantly increasing the cracking resistance, alter the failure character from splitting of the concrete to the bond loss of the external sheets and thus noticeably increase the load bearing capacity of the elements.

The current study has two objectives: to validate the ability of the Atena finite-element software to estimate the deformations of reinforced concrete (RC) elements strengthened with fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) sheets and to assess the effect of FRP-to-concrete bond strength on the results of numerical simulation. It is shown that the bond strength has to be selected according to the overall stiffness of the composite element. The numerical results found are corroborated experimentally by tensile tests of RC elements strengthened with basalt FRP sheets.

The paper presents a simple discrete crack model for analyzing the deformation and crack width of reinforced concrete beams. The model is based on a non-iterative algorithm and uses a rigid-plastic bond-slip law and elastic properties of materials. Curvatures and crack widths predicted by the proposed technique were checked against the test results of six experimental beams, reported by the authors and other investigators. The article also proposes and discusses a numerical procedure for deriving the average bond stress with reference to the test data. Serviceability analysis resulted in a reasonable agreement on the test measurements. Santrauka Straipsnyje pateikiamas supaprastintas diskrečiųjų plyšiu modelis gelžbetoninių sijų deformacijų ir plyšio pločio analizei. Modelis pagrįstas neiteraciniu algoritmu, remiantis standžiai plastiniu sukibimo desniu ir tampriosiomis medžiagų savybėmis. Remiantis skirtingų autorių atliktais eksperimentiniais duomenimis, modelis patikrintas skaičiuojant gelžbetoninių sijų kreivius ir plyšio pločius. Apskaičiuotos kreivių ir plyšio pločių reikšmės gana tiksliai sutapo su eksperimentiniais rezultatais. Taip pat pasiūlytas originalus vidutinių sukibimo įtempių apskaičiavimo metodas, remiantis eksperimentiniais lenkiamujų gelžbetoninių sijų bandymo rezultatais.