Reinforced concrete (RC) beams are significant structural members in load transferring process in structural skeleton. The load carrying capacity of beams may be decreased due to several reasons such as design or execution errors and difference between the designed and actual loads. To overcome this problem, various strengthening techniques can be used. Strengthening with steel fiber-reinforced concrete (SFRC) jackets can enhance the capacity, and stiffness of RC beams. It is also capable of decreasing the induced deformations. Moreover, it has many advantages over the other methods of strengthening such as the reduced thickness of the jacket, fire resistance and invulnerability against corrosion. The available information on behavior of RC beams fail in flexure strengthened with SFRC is limited.
The objective of this study is to develop non-linear three dimensional finite element models to simulate the behavior of simply supported RC beams externally strengthened in flexure with FRC jacket.
The finite element procedure implemented in this study is developed using the available element types from ANSYS element library (Concrete, steel reinforcement bars, interface between concrete and steel, loading plates, supporting plates, FRC jacket, and interface between concrete and FRC jacket).
The validity of the analytical model has been verified by compared the results of analytical model with the experimental results of tests from previous works.
The predicted results of the analytical model have shown a close agreement with the previous experimental results.