Full-Scale Fire Resistance Testing of Concrete Beams Reinforced with Various FRPR einforcement

Abstract

The widespread use of Fibre-Reinforced Polymers (FRP) reinforced concrete (RC) structural members is hindered by their low fire resistant characteristics, limiting their use to cases, where fire resistance is not a priority. Presented and discussed are experimental results pertaining to the flexural members subjected to heating and simultaneous loading. Solely non-metallic FRP bars: (i) Basalt FRP (BFRP), (ii) Hybrid FRP (HFRP) with carbon and basalt fibres and (ii) nano-Hybrid FRP (nHFRP) with modified epoxy resin, were used as internal reinforcement for beams. The destruction of the beams was caused in different ways, beams reinforced with BFRP bars were destroyed by reinforcement failure while those reinforced with hybrid FRP bars were destroyed by concrete crushing. The BFRP reinforced beams obtained a maximum temperature, measured directly on the bars, of 917 °C, compared to beams reinforced with hybrid FRP bars, where the temperature on the bars reached 400-550 °C at failure. Moreover, the highest registered ductility was obtained for BFRP reinforced beams as well, where the maximum deflections reached approximately 16 cm.

Keywords

• fibre-reinforced polymers (frp) bars
• hybrid frp bars
• frp-rc beams
• fire resistance of frp
• fireresistance of frp-rc members