Numerical investigation of the effects of compression GFRP reinforcement on the flexural strength and ductility of reinforced concrete beams

Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) bars with significant resistance against the corrosion lead to an improvement in the performance of concrete structures and a significant reduction in costs. High ratio of tensile strength to weight, being non-conductive, and non-magnetic are other features of them. Recent international design standards, such as ACI 440.1R-15 do not recommend including FRP reinforcement in compression and replace them by concrete in calculations. In this study, due to the prediction of the effect of the GFRP compression bars on the flexural strength and ductility of GFRP reinforced concrete beams, the thirteen concrete specimens were modeled using finite element software, ABAQUS. Concrete elastoplastic behavior after the peak was defined using the concrete damaged plasticity model in software. Experimental data from previous studies were used as a criterion for numerical investigations and the model results were validated using numerical modeling. The results demonstrated that the displacement-force graphs, obtained from numerical analysis, were in good agreement with the respective curves obtained from the laboratory analysis. According to the numerical evaluation, GFRP reinforced concrete beams included higher flexural strength, i.e., the average flexural strength of steel-reinforced concrete beam was about 90% of the GFRP reinforced concrete beam. Also, the ductility of GFRP concrete beam specimens was greater than that for the steel beam specimen. Increasing the percentage of GFRP compression reinforcement resulted in higher energy absorption and ultimately higher ductility of the GFRP concrete beams. The numerical results indicated that GFRP compression reinforcement does not significantly increase the flexural strength of beams.