Abstract

Concrete structures are deteriorated due to environment conditions. Strengthening of existing structures are the most important challenges in the Civil Engineering. Recently, Basalt fibre are used for strengthening due to various advantages such as good range of thermal performance, high tensile strength, resistance to acids, good electromagnetic properties, inert nature, resistance to corrosion. This study presents the flexural behavior of Unidirectional and Multidirectional Basalt Fibre Reinforced Polymer (BFRP) composites, strengthened with reinforced concrete beams. For flexural strengthening of reinforced concrete beams, totally nine beams of size 100.160.1700 mm were cast using M20 grade concrete and tested under two point loading. One beam was used as reference and four beams were strengthened with uni directional BFRP composite and four beams were strengthened with Multi directional BFRP composite at bottom surface alone in the form of single layer, double layers, three layers and four layers, respectively. Test result indicates, the first crack load of strengthened beams with unidirectional BFRP increased by 14.98 to 66.79% when compared to reference beam and multi layered BFRP increased by 6.79 to 47.98%. The ultimate load carrying capacity increases from 8.6 to 34.6% in unidirectional BFRP and 5.66 to 20% in multidirectional BFRP when compared to reference beam. This study presents the enhancement in the structural behavior of BFRP strengthened beams compared with reference beam.

Keywords:

Basalt fibre, flexural behavior, multidirectional , polymer composites , strengthening , unidirectional,

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Competing interests

The authors have no competing interests.

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The authors have no competing interests.