Shear behavior of circular concrete short columns reinforced with GFRP longitudinal bars and CFRP grid stirrups

Although fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) reinforcements have become popular, the post-pultrusion bending leads to significant deficiency in bent portions. This study adopts flexible carbon FRP (CFRP) grids as stirrups, and investigates the shear behavior of circular short columns reinforced with GFRP bars and CFRP grid stirrups. Six specimens with different shear reinforcement ratios, axial load ratios and types of stirrups (CFRP grids and steel hoops) were tested to shear failures. The failure models, crack and strain developments, and shear load-horizontal displacement responses are presented for discussion. All specimens experienced shear-compression failures, and the critical diagonal crack widths increased approximately linearly with shear loads. The typical shear load-horizontal displacement curve consists of three branches: a linear elastic branch, a cracking branch with progressive slope deteriorations, and an almost flat failure branch. Increasing CFRP grid stirrup ratio could not only enhance strength and ductility performances, but also alleviate the slope degradations, while increasing axial load ratio could enhance the initial cracking load, restrain crack propagations, and reduce the lateral displacements. In terms of strength performance, steel hoops can be replaced by CFRP grid stirrups even with smaller stirrup ratio. Additionally, analytical investigations suggested that the effective stresses and strains of CFRP grids at failure may be lower than code limits.