Increasing the Strength Parameters of Beams of M30 Grade Concrete by Use of Various FRPs

Safety of Civil Engineering structures is of paramount importance. Different methods have been adopted by scientist for stabilizing the concrete structures, but still lack of knowledge of the geography of the region; many structures fail to satisfy. Still instances are there regarding many such structures do not meet to the specified design requirements, thus become unsafe. Completely demolishing an old structure and then reconstructing is too cumbersome and uneconomical besides time consuming and troublesome. One of the most economical, effective materials for rehabilitation and strengthening of RCC beams that has been found and is being used from the last decade is fibre reinforced polymer. (Danraka1, Mahmod and Oluwatosin, 2017) They do have high strength to weight ratio, high stiffness, and corrosion resistance. In these study 15 numbers of RCC beams were casted. M30 grade of concrete mix was used and all beams of same detailing were used. Three beams each were used as control beams without strengthening. The same number of beams were strengthened with Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymer, Glass Fibre Reinforced polymer, Aramid Fibre Reinforced Polymer and Polyethylene Terephthalate Fibre Reinforced Polymer. Beams wrapped with Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymer has enhanced the flexural strength of beam by 33.33%, beams wrapped with Aramid Fibre Reinforced polymer improved flexural strength by 26%, beams wrapped with Glass Fibre Reinforced polymer improved flexural strength by 20%  and finally wrapped with Polyethylene Terephthalate Fibre Reinforced polymer improved flexural strength by 15%. The overall implications of the above study are to compare the results with the normal RCC beams and justifiable reasons are incorporated with the results about the enhancement of flexural strength without disturbing all the other parameters.