Flexural Response of Prestressed FRP Strengthened Reinforced Concrete Beam under Static Load

The motive of building sustainable structures and strengthening the structural members is important to overcome the problems associated with poor initial design and/or construction, accidental events, and degradation related to the environment. This paper aims to assess the flexural behavior of a prestressed basaltic fiber-reinforced polymer- (FRP-) strengthened reinforced concrete (RC) beam under static load through the finite-element method using ABAQUS CAE that is validated with experimental results from relevant literature. To achieve the desired objective, 18 models were prepared based on prestressing level, thickness of basalt FRP (BFRP), width of BFRP, length of BFRP, bond between concrete and BFRP, and type of FRP as study parameters. The results indicate that the use of prestressed BFRP is efficient in strengthening the flexural strength of the RC beam. Compared to nonstrengthened specimens, the flexural capacity of the specimens strengthened with BFRP at prestressing levels of 0%, 15%, 35%, and 45% show enhancement of 6.09%, 9.17%, 13.89%, and 17.57%, respectively. While increasing the width, length, and thickness of the prestressed BFRP section, increased yielding and ultimate load capacity of the specimen have been obtained; however, the ductility has been reduced up to 13.87% with increasing the BFRP thickness. The result also shows that the specimen strengthened with prestressed BFRP has better ductility than the prestressed carbon FRP (CFRP)-strengthened specimen; however, the model strengthened with prestressed CFRP has shown higher load-carrying capacity. It is also noticed that a cohesive bond better suited the experimental specimen than the fixed interference of the concrete surface, and relative to the cohesive bond, the fixed interference has shown a 17.4% higher ultimate load carrying capacity.