Flexural analysis of reinforced concrete beams strengthened with a cement based high strength composite material

The structural behaviour of reinforced concrete beams strengthened with a system made by fibre nets embedded into an inorganic stabilized cementitious matrix named Fibre Reinforced Cementitious Mortars (FRCM), was investigated in this paper. The main issues focussed in the paper are: (i) the strengthening effect of the FRCM system on the flexural behaviour of reinforced concrete beams in terms of both ultimate capacity, deflections and ductility and (ii) the influence of the fibre reinforcement ratio on the occurrence of premature failure modes. The analysis refers to a FRCM system made by ultra-high strength fibre meshes such as the Polypara-phenylene-benzo-bisthiazole (PBO) fibres; PBO fibres have, in fact, great impact tolerance, energy absorption capacity superior than the other kind of fibres and chemical compatibility with the cementitious mortar. A total of 12 reinforced concrete beams strengthened in flexure with the PBO-FRCM system have been tested. The influence of some mechanical and geometrical parameters on the structural behaviour of strengthened beams, is analysed both at serviceability and the ultimate conditions. Results of a comparison between experimental results and theoretical predictions, obtained by models usually adopted for the analysis of FRP strengthened concrete structures, are, also, presented and discussed.