Comparing the behavior of reinforced HSC beams with AFRP bars and confined HSC beams with AFRP sheets under bending

By increasing the use of FRP composites in civil engineering, they seem highly essential to be studied. The purpose of the study is comparison of the behavior of AFRP reinforced HSC beams (reinforced with AFRP bars) and steel reinforced HSC beams which confined with AFRP sheets under bending. eighteen beams have been modeled with ANSYS. Three beams are HSC which reinforced with AFRP bars. After modeling, the results have been compared with experimental results and then software has been calibrated. Then twelve steel reinforced HSC beams which confined with AFRP sheets (with different number of laminates) have been modeled. In addition three simple steel reinforced HSC beams have been modeled as the base of comparison. At the end behavior of aforementioned beams has been compared and corresponding graphs have been sketched. could also significantly increase the service life of ordinary concrete structures. [2,7] In the case of flexure, the very high strength FRP bars, which exhibit elastic response up to failure, could perhaps be effectively used in combination with high strength concrete (HSC). However the majority of reported research works (Cosenza et al 1997 [5]; Toutanji and Saafi 2000 [11]) dealt only with normal strength concrete (f ′ c ≤ 41 Mpa), while some other (Benmokrane et al. 1996 [12]; Masmoudi et al. 1998 [6]; Grace et al. 1998 [13]) considered concrete with maximum compressive strength (f ′ c ) of up to 70 Mpa. Only The’riault and Benmokrane (1998) [14] used concrete with (f ′ c ) as high as 100 Mpa. Some other researchers worked on the effect of confinement of RC beams (Dathinh and Starnes [4]). In this study behavior of HSC beams reinforced and confined with AFRP under bending have been compared. ANSYS 9 has been used for modeling the beams. 2 MODELING WITH ANSYS ANSYS is suitable software for nonlinear analysis. Designing with ANSYS has three parts; preprocessor,