Studying the effects of CFRP and GFRP sheets on the strengthening of self-compacting RC girders

One method of retrofitting concrete structures is to use fiber reinforced polymers (FRP). In this research, the shear, torsional and flexural strengthening of self-compacting reinforced concrete (RC) girders are fulfilled with glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) and carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) materials. At first, for verification, the experimental results were compared with numerical modeling results obtained from ABAQUS software version 6.10. Then the reinforcing sheets were attached to concrete girders in one and two layers. Studying numerical results obtained from ABAQUS software showed that the girders stiffness decreased with the propagations of cracks in them, and then the extra stresses were tolerated by adhesive layers and GFRP and CFRP sheets, which resulted in increasing the bearing capacity of the studied girders. In fact, shear, torsion and bending strengths of the girders increased by reinforcing girders with adding GFRP and CFRP sheets. The samples including two layers of CFRP had the maximum efficiencies that were 90, 76 and 60 percent of improvement in shear, torsion and bending strengths, respectively. It is worth noting that the bearing capacity of concrete girders with adding one layer of CFRP was slightly higher than the ones having two layers of GFRP in all circumstances; therefore, despite the lower initial cost of GFRP, using CFRP can be more economical in some conditions.