Influence of Textile Reinforcement on the Thermal Behavior of Steel Reinforced Concrete: Experimental Investigation
Authors:-Alak Kumar Patra
Abstract-Thermal behavior of conventional steel reinforced concrete with embedded glass (GF) and carbon fibers (CF) are experimentally studied at elevated temperatures after 7 days curing under water. The compressive strengths for M20 and M30 grades of concretes with and without fiber reinforcements have been determined at room temperature (27°C). The flexural strengths of prismatic M20 and M30 concrete specimens without any reinforcement and with GF as well as CF have been determined at 60°C and 80°C respectively. Similarly flexural strengths of prismatic M20 and M30 steel reinforced specimens with GF and CF were tested to determine their flexural strengths. Results indicate that the compressive strength of both the M20 and M30 concretes were least for specimens without fibers, maximum for specimens with CF and the compressive strength of GF reinforced cubes were in between the compressive strengths with CF and without any fibers. At 60°C, the flexural strengths of M20 and M30 concrete were observed to be least for conventional samples, maximum for concretes with CF and flexural strengths of samples with GF was slightly less than that with CF. Though the flexural strengths were significantly improved for both the fiber reinforcements, there were no significant change in that for GF or CF reinforcements. The flexural strengths of concrete with steel rebars additionally reinforced with CF and GF show overall improvement in flexural strengths in all cases along with the nature of variation similar to that without steel rebars. The nature of variation for specimens with and without fibers or steel rebars follow same pattern as that at 80°C but with lesser values in all the cases. Which indicates that these variations should be taken into account for design and construction of fiber reinforced concrete with steel rebars facing high temperature variations.
