Development of Sustainable Concrete with Incorporation of GFRP Bars

Abstract

As the world is moving towards sustainability the goal was to make sustainable concrete and for this purpose, The recycled aggregate was used as an alternative to natural aggregate and an optimum quantity was taken and silica fume to achieve the high-performance concrete strength concrete. Recycled aggregate replacement in range of 10%-30% was taken along with 7% silica fume to achieve a high-performance sustainable concrete. It was observed that concrete silica fume enhanced the cooperative strength of concrete. There was a minimum decrease in concrete strength after 20% RCA substitute and this was then selected as the optimum formulation. The sustainable concrete formulation was employed to cast concrete beams of two different spans namely 750 and 1500 mm were integrated with GFRP rebars. The experimental testing of the beams under three-point bending were carried out and subsequent analysis was performed. The 1500 mm span beam failed in flexure and shear whereas the 750mm beam failed in pure shear both then following FRP rupture. The failure modes indicated by Abaqus software were in line with experimental values. The research was then extended to model the beams in ABAQUS . An investigation on the effect of reinforcement ratio and size of reinforcement was studied. It was observed that an increase in reinforcement ratio led towards concrete crushing failure whereas a decrease in GFRP reinvestment size resulted in FRP rupture. The ABAQUS software predicted the strength of the beam with great accuracy. A detailed cost analysis was performed that concluded that the effect of using RCA and GFRP bars in concrete resulted in 9.1% savings in cost of concrete. Moreover, use of RCA tends to reduce the cost of concrete by 5.42% and its combined use with GFRP rebars increases savings up to 6.20%.