Study on Retrofitting and Strengthening of Reinforced Concrete Beams Using Fibrous Concrete

Abstract

Reinforced concrete structures are frequently in need of repair and strengthening as a result of numerous environmental causes, ageing, or material damage under intense stress conditions, as well as mistakes made during the construction process. RC structures are repaired using a variety of approaches nowadays. The usage of FRC is one of the retrofitting strategies. Steel fiber reinforced concrete (SFRC) was used in this investigation because it contains randomly dispersed short discrete steel fibers that operate as internal reinforcement to improve the cementitious composite's characteristics (concrete). The main rationale for integrating small discrete fibers into a cement matrix is to reduce the amount of cement used. The principal reason for incorporating short discrete fibers into a cement matrix is to reduce cracking in the elastic range, increase the tensile strength and deformation capacity and increase the toughness of the resultant composite. These properties of SFRC primarily depend upon length and volume of Steel fibers used in the concrete mixture. In India, the steel fiber reinforced concrete (SFRC) has seen limited applications in several structures due to the lack of awareness, design guidelines and construction specifications. Therefore, there is a need to develop information on the role of steel fibers in the concrete mixture. The experimental work reported in this study includes the mechanical properties of concrete at different volume fractions of steel fibers. These mechanical properties include compressive strength, split tensile strength and flexural strength and to study the effect of volume fraction and aspect ratio of steel fibers on these mechanical properties. However, main aim of the study was significance of reinforced concrete beams strengthened with fiber reinforced concrete layer and to investigate how these beams deflect under strain. The objective of the investigation was finding that applying FRC to strengthen beams enhanced structural performance in terms of ultimate load carrying capacity, fracture pattern deflection, and mode of failure or not.