Strength of GFRP Reinforced HPC Square Columns.

Nonmetallic reinforcement offers many advantages over steel reinforcement on qualities like light weight, high strength to weight ratio, electromagnetic insulation properties, etc., and hence researchers are focussing on Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) as an alternative to steel to be used as reinforcement. This is due to their relatively low cost-toperformance ratio and noncorrosive nature. Hence, an attempt was made in this study to find the suitability of Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) rebar as reinforcement for compression members and to investigate the possibilities of identifying suitable alternate reinforcement to steel and compare their performance in terms of load carrying capacity. M60 grade of concrete was chosen for the study, and the cross section of the compression member chosen was square with a size of 150 mm × 150 mm. Four different slenderness ratios of 6, 8, 10 and 12 and three different percentages of reinforcement, 1.4, 2 and 3.5, were adopted to study the effect of slenderness ratio, and the percentage of reinforcement on the load carrying capacity of RC column and the end conditions chosen were pinned. A critical analysis was made with experimental investigation by testing 24 numbers of concrete columns, with 12 numbers each in GFRP and steel. It is concluded that the load carrying capacity of GFRP reinforced column is 2 to 6 percentage more, compared to steel reinforced column for all the slenderness ratios tested, and the rate of increase is higher for 2 percentage reinforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]