Experimental Study on Glass Fibres Reinforced Polymer Composites

All over the world maintenance and repair of reinforced concrete structures are becoming major challenge for the construction industry. Many reinforced concrete structures that were designed and constructed before the serious application of earthquake-resistant design codes are vulnerable to seismic forces. The serviceability conditions of many buildings have been changed to meet present requirement. The structures are to be strengthened to take additional loads induced by the above factors. In the past research works have been carried out by researchers with regard to effect of Fiber reinforced Polymer (FRP) wrappings for a particular type of wrapping and loading conditions. Not much work has been carried out in a single work to find the effectiveness of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP), Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) wrapping for different span to depth ratios (L/D) of beams and height to least lateral dimension (H/D) ratio of columns. An experimental investigation was conducted to study the effectiveness of wrapping with CFRP and GFRP for different span to depth ratios of control and strengthened reinforced concrete members (beams and columns). The wrapped beams were tested under static and cyclic loading conditions and columns were tested to ultimate load level under uniaxial compression. From the study, the effect of wrapping in load carrying capacity, improvements in stiffness, ductility behavior have been analyzed and a comparison was drawn between CFRP and GFRP wrapping.