Finite Element Modeling and Experimental Study on GRP/Concrete under Bending

A.C. Seibi
1
, S.K. Al-Oraimi
2
, and F. Al-Jahwary
2

1
Mechanical Engineering, Petroleum Institute, P.O. Box 2533, Abu Dhabi, UAE
2
College of Engineering, Sultan Qaboos University, P.O. Box 33 Muscat 123, Oman


ABSTRACT
A finite element model aimed at studying the flexural behavior of Glass Reinforced Polyester (GRP) concrete
composites was developed. A general purpose finite element package ABAQUS was used to predict the peeling
strength at the interface of concrete slabs and GRP by studying the distribution of the contact pressure. In addition,
effective stress on the GRP bucket and equivalent plastic strain on concrete slabs were investigated. Stress analysis
of the GRP/concrete composites indicated that the flexural strength of the GRP/concrete composite was found to be
at least three times higher than that of the conventional concrete prism. Delamination and flexural failure modes
were also identified by the finite element model and confirmed experimentally.

Keywords: High performance concrete; glass fiber composites; finite element modeling, failure modes.

INTRODUCTION
Most of the concrete structures in the Gulf region are deteriorating very rapidly due to corrosion caused by
humidity and harsh environments. Conventional rehabilitation techniques proved to be inefficient to constrain
further deterioration in prolonging the lifetime of affected reinforced concrete structures. Fiberglass Reinforced
Plastic (FRP) materials, on the other hand, offer another cheap and reliable alternative in the construction industry
to strengthen and rehabilitate concrete structures. In addition, FRP-wrapping enhances shear and axial strengths as
well as ductility of the slabs [1].
High strength concrete tends to be more brittle than normal strength concrete. Although the tensile strength
increases for high strength concrete, the ratio between tensile strength and compressive strength changes from
approximately 10% for normal strength concrete to approximately 5% for high strength concrete. Different types of
fibers are incorporated in the concrete mixes. These fibers are usually short, discrete, and discontinuous. The
principal role of these fibers is to control the cracking of fiber reinforced concrete (FRC) and modify the behavior
of the material once the concrete matrix has cracked. This is done by bridging across the cracks as they begin to
open, fibers provide post-cracking ductility to the FRC [2-4]. Damaged concrete structures can be rehabilitated
using FRP jacketing technique where cracked areas are wrapped by FRP.
A large number of experimental and numerical studies dealing with the jacketing or confinement effect on concrete
slabs have been carried out [5-10]. Most of the studies showed that jacketed damaged concrete slabs under uniaxial
compression increase their strength by five times. This increase depends on the concrete mixes used and the
thickness of the FRP layers. These studies focused mainly on the behavior of wrapped concrete slabs under
compression. Recently, a limited number of studies dealt with the flexural response of jacketed concrete slabs [11-
13]. However, this area still needs further investigation. This paper, therefore, studies the effect of FRP confined
concrete slabs under four point bending. A finite element analysis of reinforced concrete slabs placed inside FRP
buckets was carried out. An experimental study of the same configuration as the FE model was conducted to
validate the finite element results. Flexural tests of various high strength reinforced concretes wrapped by FRP
were conducted. The experimental data were compared to the finite element results and failure modes were also
identified.

FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS
Modeling
A 3-D finite element model of reinforced concrete slabs wrapped by Glass Reinforce Polyester (GRP) was
developed using a general purpose finite element software ABAQUS [14]. The model was used to study the
structural response of the wrapped slabs under four points bending. Due to symmetry, only one fourth of the
GRP/Concrete composite slabs was taken into consideration (see Fig. 1). Eight nodes linear brick elements with
reduced integration were used to model the GRP-wrapped reinforced concrete slabs. Contact between GRP and
concrete slabs was modeled using Coulomb friction law to account for the induced friction force and contact
pressure. A total number of 2370 elements were used to build the finite element model. Material properties of the
FRP and reinforced concrete slabs were input in the model. The GRP mould was treated as a brittle material where
Poissons ratio and elastic modulus were taken as 0.27 and 216.7 GPa, respectively. However, concrete slabs were
modeled as an elastic perfectly plastic material. In this study, different concrete mixes were used and their
corresponding moduli of elasticity and Poissons ratios are included in Table 1. However, the yield strength, failure
strength, and plastic strain at failure for all mixes were taken as 20.68 MPa, 37.92 MPa, and 1.5 x 10
-3
, respectively.

Boundary Conditions and Loading
Because of symmetry, all nodes lying on the planes of symmetry (1, 2) and (2, 3) are constrained from moving
along the 3- and 1-directions, respectively. However, nodes lying at the interface between the support and GRP
mould were restricted from moving along the 2-direction only. A vertical displacement at the top nodes located at
the interface of the loading rod and the GRP/concrete composites was imposed. The imposed displacement was
applied monotonically downward up to a maximum value of 11 mm.

EXPERIMENTAL STUDY
Samples Preparation and Testing Procedure
Concrete mixtures consisting of cement, aggregate, silica fume, and plasticizers were prepared in the rotating pan
and placed inside ready made GRP buckets. The overall mixing time took approximately four minutes. A number
of 100x100x500 mm GRP moulds were manufactured in a nearby factory. All specimens were compacted by
means of a vibrating table. Three prisms of each mix were left in the GRP moulds and cured in water tank for 27
days at room temperature. A four point bending test was performed on the 100x100x500 mm concrete slabs
covered by GRP. These tests were carried out under stroke control at a rate of 2mm/minute using an MTS universal
testing machine with a load cell capacity of 100 kN. A typical set of this test is shown in Fig. 2. The deflection of
the loading roller relative to the end supports was measured and plotted digitally using Excel program. This test
was essentially done to measure the flexural strength of the composite and identify potential failure modes of the
concrete/GRP composites.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The finite element analysis was supplemented by an experimental study to validate experimental data of
concrete/GRP composites under four point bending. The developed model was first validated for mortar mix only
to gain confidence on the model and proceed with extracting other results. Fig. 3 shows the applied load-deflection
curve of a typical four point bending test. The figure shows that the simulation and experimental results are in a
good agreement. The model also predicts the separation between the GRP mould and concrete slab as the load
increases. Fig. 4a shows the nodal displacement of a node located at the corner of the GRP mould, where most of
the separation between the concrete slab and GRP mould takes place, as a function of cross head movement. It can
be seen that the nodal displacement takes a maximum value of 4.05 mm as compared to 4.5 mm obtained
experimentally. The delamination is best described by comparison between the deformed shape and tested
GRP/concrete block just before failure takes place (see Figs. 4b and 4c). Further analysis showed that failure of the
GRP mould may initiate at the bottom of the lateral face near the support due to high stress concentration. Fig. 5
shows the contour for the effective stress and the corresponding effective stress on the outer face of the lateral
surface as well as a failed section of the GRP mould. It can be seen that the highest values of the effective stress
occurs at the bottom of the surface near the support (see Figs. 5a and 5c). The high stress concentration near the
supports indicates the tendency of failure initiation at this location as was observed experimentally shown in Fig.
5c.

CONCLUSIONS
The objective of this paper was to study the effect of glass reinforced concrete composites mould on the flexural
strength of concrete prisms. It was found that use of GRP concrete composite enhanced the flexural strength of
all mixes by at least three times. In addition, finite element results predicted a maximum separation between the
GRP mould and concrete within 10% accuracy of experimental values. It was also shown that failure of GRP
mould is expected to take place at the bottom of the lateral surface near the support as observed experimentally.

REFERENCES

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.
Concrete Mix
Materials
Mortar
Low
Strength
Medium
Strength
High
Strength
Cement (kg/m
3
) 520 400 400 400
Fine Agg. (kg/m
3
) 1560 800 725 710
Coarse Agg. (kg/m
3
) - 1000 1125 1190
Water (kg/m
3
) 260 224 200 175
Silica Fume (kg/m
3
) - - - 40
w/b ratio 0.5 0.56 0.5 0.40
w/c ratio 0.5 0.56 0.5 0.44
Superplasticizers (L/m
3
) - - - 8.0

Table 1: Description of Mix Proportions



Flexural Strength
(MPa)
(V%)
Mix No.
Compressive Strength
(MPa)
(V%)
Splitting Strength
(MPa), (V%)
Flexural Strength
(MPa), (V%)
GRP Composites
Mortar 39.2 (2.2)
2.4 (3.4)
5.5 (1.8)
32 (2.5)
Low Strength 37.9 (3.4) 2.3 (2.6) 5.4 (2.4)
33 (3.2)
MediumStrength 66.6 (1.9) 3.9 (2.4) 9.3 (3.1)
34 (2.9)
High Strength 71.4 (2.6) 4.6 (1.8) 10.7 (2.7)
38 (2.2)

Table 2: Experimental values of the Compressive, Flexural, and Splitting Strengths for the Mixes



Figure 1 FEM of GRP/concrete composites.


Testing Fixture 2 Figure

0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
0 2 4 6 8 10
defl ecti on al ong y (mm)
F
o
r
c
e

(
K
N
)
experiment FEM


Figure 3 Comparison Between FEM and Experimental Results.








a) Nodal displacement vs. cross head
movement.









b) Deformed shape of the FEM








c) Experiment results just before failure










a) Von Mises stress








b) GRP failure at the lateral
surface





c) Effective stress distribution






Figure 4 Separation Phenomenon.
Figure 5 Comparison Between Finite Element Results and Experimental Observations.