Flexural behavior of basalt FRP reinforced ECC and concrete beams

In recent years, fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) bars have been used as novel concrete reinforcement in the beams. However, the ductility of the beams is highly dependent on the properties of concrete since concrete crushing governs the failure mode. Substitution of concrete with engineered cementitious composite (ECC) can avoid the cracking and durability problems associated with brittleness of concrete. In this paper, the flexural behavior of ECC and concrete beams reinforced with basalt FRP bars were numerically investigated with the software of ATENA/GID solver. To verify the validity of the finite element models of the composite beams, the simulation results were compared with the published experimental results of both FRP reinforced concrete and ECC beams, and good agreements were achieved. According to the simulation results, the BFRP reinforced ECC beams show much better flexural properties in terms of load-carrying capacity, deformability and crack controlling ability compared with the BFRP reinforced concrete beams. Also, the BFRP bars in ECC matrix were much more efficiently utilized than those in concrete, and the failure process is much more ductile due to much higher ultimate compressive strain of ECC materials in the compressive zone. An extensive parametric analysis was then conducted to examine the effect of various parameters on the flexural behavior of BFRP reinforced ECC beams.