Deflection of Reinforced Concrete Beams Reinforced by Fiber Reinforced Polymer Grids with Various Joint Designs

The goal of this research is to evaluate the immediate deflections of concrete beams by carbon FRP grids with carious fiber placement designs. Manufacturing and testing various FRP grid designs are the first steps toward the long-term goal of developing FRP reinforcement with optimized strength and serviceability performance. Four grid designs with stiffnesses that ranged from 47.1 kN/mm to 33.6 kN/mm, as determined from stand-alone tensile tests, were used as reinforcement in concrete beams and tested in flexure via three-point loading. The flexural results are in good agreement with the deflections as determined from a modified version of the ACI 318 flexure equations.