Prestressed Concrete Beam with Aramid Fibre Compression Confinement and Extenal Tendons


Chris J. Burgoyne
Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, UK
Hau Yin Leung
City University of Hong Kong, China

The lack of ductility of fibre reinforced plastics (FRPs) means that it is desirable for beams containing these elements as reinforcement or prestressing tendons to fail by concrete crushing, but this leads to sudden, brittle failure. It was pointed out by Burgoyne that a rational approach to design was to prestress the Fibre Reinforced Plastic (FRP) tendons, and to use confinement of the compression zone by spirals of Fibre Reinforced Plastic (FRP) to increase the strain capacity of the concrete. The result is a beam in which the strain capacities of the tension and compression zones can be made of similar magnitude, which leads to reasonable curvatures, efficient use of the materials, and high ductility. Research at the University of Cambridge has studied the theoretical behaviour of spirally confined concrete and conducted tests on samples containing either single spirals or overlapping spirals, with forces applied either axially or eccentrically. This has led to predictions for the way a beam made in this way should behave. That work is reported in detail elsewhere. This paper gives some background information and presents the final beam test that drew the various aspects of the work together.

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