Reinforced Concrete Beams with Carbon-Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Bars—Experimental Study

Innovative reinforcement as fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) bars has been proposed as alternative for the substitution of the traditional steel bars in reinforced concrete (RC) structures. Although the advantages of this polymer reinforcement have long been recognised, the predominantly elastic response, the reduced bond capacity under repeated load and the low ductility of RC members with FRP bars restricted its wide application in construction so far. In this work, the behavior of seven slender concrete beams reinforced with carbon-FRP bars under increasing static loading is experimentally investigated. Load capacities, deflections, pre-cracking and after-cracking stiffness, sudden local drops of strength, failure modes, and cracking propagation have been presented and commented. Special attention has been given in the bond conditions of the anchorage lengths of the tensile carbon-FRP bars. The application of local confinement conditions along the anchorage lengths of the carbon-FRP bars in some specimens seems to influence their cracking behavior. Nevertheless, more research is required in this direction. Comparisons of experimental results for carbon-FRP beams with beams reinforced with glass-FRP bars extracted from recent literature are also presented and commented. Comparisons of the experimental results with the predictions according to ACI 440.1R-15 and to CSA S806-12 are also included herein.