Behavior of Slender GFRP Reinforced Concrete Columns

This paper presents an experimental and analytical study on slender concrete columns reinforced with glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) bars. The experimental program included ten concrete columns with rectangular cross-section (203 × 305 mm) where nine of them were reinforced with #6 GFRP bars and one of them was reinforced with steel rebars. Three different reinforcement ratios of 4.70, 2.82, and 2.04 as well as four slenderness ratios of 17, 22, 40, and 60 were considered under two load eccentricities of 0.1 and 0.25 of width of the cross-section. The analytical model considered the material nonlinearity as well as the geometric nonlinearity. The model was verified against an independent experimental program. The model showed that as the load eccentricity and slenderness ratio increase, the load capacity decreases and as the reinforcement ratios increases, the load capacity slightly increases which shows effectiveness of GFRP bars in compression.