Engineering and Technology Journal

Reinforced concrete beams are the most generally used structural parts in building, bridges, and many other structures. In the past two decades, many investigations have been conducted using various fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) material types /steel bars to reinforce concrete beams under flexural test. The purpose of this paper is to review the flexural performance of concrete beams reinforced with hybrid FRP and steel bars to better understand their behavior. The main parameters addressed by researchers were dimensions of beams, FRP bar material type, and hybrid reinforcement ratio. The researchers established that the use of the combination between steel and FRP reinforcement bars improves the performance of the concrete beams. Moreover, the studies showed that the ductility of the hybrid reinforced beams increased compared to that of conventional steel reinforced beams, however, it decreased when the ratio of (A_f/A_s) increased. The application of using hybrid FRP/steel bars in reinforcing concrete beams will further increase upon utilizing techniques for reducing the brittleness and higher cost of FRP bars. The general structure of this paper consists of presenting the formulas offered by ACI 440.1R-15 building code relating to the flexural strength calculation of concrete beams reinforced with FRP/steel bars. The paper also details some of the current experimental tests and analytical works published for concrete beams reinforced with hybrid system, and outlines research directions and identifies gaps required for additional research.

An experimental study of composite columns of hollow circular aluminum tubes enhanced with a fibers reinforced polymer (FRP) sheet and filled by lightweight concrete are presented in this paper. The study's scope is introducing and developing lightweight columns to be advantageous in lightweight and size limited structures. The test results discussed the influence of internal and external confinement effectiveness introduced by lightweight concrete and carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) retrofitting sheet, respectively. The column specimens were subjected to uniform axial compression load. Structural aluminum alloy circular hollow section has been used in this investigation. Carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) is used to piling aluminum tubes. Light weight expansion clay aggregate (LECA) is used to fabricate light weight concrete filling aluminum tubes. The strengths, shortening displacement, axial strains, lateral strains, and failure modes of columns were presented. The test results indicated that confinement and composite action between the constituent materials resulted in enhanced compressive strength, ductility and energy dissipation capacity of the proposed composite column. Finally, a simplified design equation is proposed to predict the compressive load capacity of this type of composite column.