CICE 2010 - The 5th International Conference on FRP Composites in Civil Engineering

September 27-29, 2010 Beijing, China

Confinement behaviour of eccentrically loaded RCC columns using

FRP sheets
Anupam Chakrabarti (anupam1965@yahoo.co.uk)
Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Roorkee, Roorkee, India: 247667

ABSTRACT: The use of Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) confined reinforced concrete columns are increasing rapidly for new construction as well as rebuilding of concrete structures. Design of these FRP confined
concrete columns requires an accurate estimate of the performance enhancement due to the confinement mechanism. Therefore, key issue is to develop a confinement model, which relates the confined concrete
strength with the unconfined concrete strength. In the present study, a 3-D finite element model of FRP confined reinforced concrete column under axial and eccentric loading has been developed. The finite element
model was developed using the finite element software, ANSYS. Different important parameters have been
studied in the present paper: namely, unconfined concrete strength, thickness, orthotropic properties and orientation of FRP layers. The present study has focused on some interesting aspects of these parameters on the
confinement effectiveness and has also generated many new results for future reference.

1 INTRODUCTION
The effectiveness of FRP wrapping on concrete elements such as columns has been proven by several
researchers. It is clear that there is a need to investigate the behavior of columns under eccentric loads,
as most of the columns in buildings especially those
at the edges and corner are subjected to uniaxial or
biaxial bending.
The present study aims at adding new database
for the proper understanding of FRP applications in
eccentrically loaded Reinforced concrete columns. A
nonlinear FE analysis has been used to evaluate the
effects of different parameters on the confinement
effectiveness of FRP in circular reinforced concrete
columns using the FE software ANSYS (Ref. 1).
2 FINITE ELEMENT MODELLING
Feng et al. (2002) analyzed square concrete columns
confined by FRP sheets under uni-axial compression
using FEA package ANSYS (Ref. 1). They used
William-Warnke (1975) model with five parameters
to model the failure criterion of concrete. Li et al.
(2003) used ANSYS to simulate the behavior of
FRP confined concrete columns. In the present FE
model, FRP wrapped RC column with diameter 205
mm and height 1000 mm is considered. Due to

symmetry in cross-section of the column and loading

only one half of the column was modeled. The
SOLID65, SOLID46, LINK8 and SOLID45 elements are used to model the concrete, FRP, steel and
stiff loading plate respectively. Tavarez (2001)
discussed three techniques to model steel reinforcement in FE modeling of reinforced concrete: the discrete model, the embedded model, and the smeared
model. Fanning (2001) modeled the response of the
reinforcement using the discrete model and the
smeared model for reinforced concrete beams. It was
found that the best option is to use the discrete
model and this has been adopted in the present work.
3 MATERIALS AND MODELLING
3.1 FRP composites
In the present study, thickness of one layer was 1.2
mm and it is kept constant for all the cases and up to
three numbers of layers have been considered with
different fiber orientations.
3.2 Concrete
The SOLID65 element used which requires linear
isotropic and multi-linear isotropic material properties to model the von-Misses failure criterion along
with the William and Warnke (1975) model to define the failure of the concrete.

3.3 Steel
The LINK8 element is used for all the steel reinforcement (bilinear isotropic) in the column. Elastic
modulus equal to 200000 MPa and Poissons ratio of
0.3 has been used. Tensile strengths of 500 MPa and
250 MPa are used for longitudinal and tie bars respectively. The columns have tie bars with diameter
of 10 mm at a spacing of 80 mm and six longitudinal
steels with diameter of 12 mm.
3.4 Meshing
Concrete was modeled first as a volume then
changed to a FE model by a controlled (mapped )
meshing followed by elemental modeling of the steel
(both longitudinal and tie bars). Finally the FRP was
modeled as a volume then changed to finite element
model by mapped meshing followed by modeling of
the loading stiff solid which is 150 mm long placed
and merged to the top of the concrete model. In the
present work, the number of elements used for each
of the element types for a FRP wrapped (one layer)
RC column are shown in Table 1.
Table 1. Number of elements used for different types of elements.
Element
SOLSOLID46 LINK8
SOLID45
Type
ID65
No. of
7500
490
1000
1200
element

son in case of eccentrically loaded FRP wrapped RC

columns. As such in this section, independent results
are presented to show the effects of different parameters on the behaviour of eccentrically loaded
columns.
4.1 Effect of unconfined compressive strength
FRP wrapped RC column with diameter 205 mm
and height 1000 mm is considered here. The material properties used for the models are given in Table
2. Analyses results for the models are presented in
Table 3. The load deflection curve of the models
with M 25, M 40 and M 60 grade of concrete, under
eccentric loadings are shown in Figure 1. It can be
seen from Table 3 that FRP is most effective in confining the reinforced concrete columns having lower
grade of concrete for both axially and eccentrically
loaded columns. The results in Table 3 show that the
FRP oriented in the hoop direction do not add significantly to the confinement of eccentrically loaded
columns.
Table 2. Material properties used in the models.
Comp.
Tensile
Elastic
Material
Strength
Strength
Modulus
MPa
MPa
MPa
Concrete

3.5 Boundary conditions and loadings

In the present model, the Y-axis of the coordinate
system coincides with the axis of the column. The
boundary conditions are:
1) One end of the surface was fixed
2) As the concentrated forces cause stress concentration at around point of application of the load, they
are applied as an equivalent compressive pressure.
3.6 Simulation
A nonlinear FE analysis was performed to include
the nonlinear material behavior of concrete and FRP.
In the present analysis automatic load stepping feature has been activated and the analysis is force controlled. In the present study the pressures are incrementally applied till the columns reached their
collapse state which corresponds to breaking state.
4 PARAMETRIC STUDY
For axially loaded FRP wrapped RC circular columns, the results obtained by using the present finite
element model are compared with those of Chakrabarti et al. (2008) and found to be perfectly matching. There is scarcity of sufficient data for compari-

Bars

FRP
composite
t = 1.2
mm

Poissons
ratio

25
40
60

3.114
3.939
4.824

23665
29934
36668

0.2
0.2
0.2

Longbar
Strength
MPa

Tiebar
Strength
MPa

Elastic
Modulus
MPa

Poissons
ratio

500
Elastic
Modulus
MPa
E x =9603
2
E y =5400
E z =5400

250
Poissons Ratio

2.0x105
Shear
Modulus
MPa

0.3
Ult.Tensile
Strength
MPa

xy = 0.29
yz = 0.43
zx = .016

G xy =2001
G yz =1882
G zx =2001

1353

Table 3. Summary of analyses results for varying grade of concrete.

ConEccentricity P curc , kN P cc , kN
P curc /P cc
(RC)
(FRP
crete
mm
wrapped
grade
RC)
M25
0
1234.08
2490.00
2.02
M40
0
1741.31
2287.00
1.31
M60
0
2363.67
2836.40
1.20
M25
50
845.16
972.40
1.15
M40
50
1193.93
1351.03
1.13
M60
50
1578.43
1767.89
1.12

Figure 1. Effect of grade of concrete on load deflection curve

(e=50mm).

Figure 3. Effect of variation in FRP fiber orientation on confinement effectiveness.

4.2 Effect of Fiber orientation of FRP sheets

5 CONCLUSIONS

Six circular specimens 205 mm x 1000 mm having

same grade of concrete (25MPa) and FRP composite
material (E frp = 96032 MPa) but varying FRP fiber
orientation have been analyzed. Fiber orientations of
0, 45 and 90 degrees respectively have been tried in
the analyses. Table 4 summarizes the analysis results
for varying fiber orientation of FRP composite
wrapped columns under pure axial and eccentric
loading (e = 50mm). Figure 2 shows when these
models are subjected to eccentric loading, 90 degrees fiber orientation has been observed to enhance
the load carrying capacity the most. Figure 3 shows
the variation of confinement effectiveness with the
variation in fiber orientation.
Table 4. Summary of analyses results for variation in Fiber orientation.
P cc , kN P cc /P curc
Fiber oriEccentricity
(FRP
entation
mm
P curc ,kN
(RC)
wrappe
(deg)
d RC)
0
0
1234.08
2490.00
2.02
45
0
1234.08
1261.71
1.02
90
0
1234.08
1257.64
1.01
0
50
845.16
971.93
1.15
45
50
845.16
1039.55
1.23
90
50
845.16
1183.22
1.40

Figure 2. Effect of Fiber orientation on load deflection curve

(e=50mm).

The following conclusions can be made for the analysis results investigated in this work:
The confinement effectiveness is found to be
smaller with increase in grade of concrete
Zero degree fiber orientation has been observed
to be the most effective for models under pure
axial load and 90 degrees fiber orientation was
the most effective for eccentric loading.
External confinement with FRP composites significantly increases the strength of concrete column. However, when the eccentric load is introduced the strength loss is obvious and to a
greater extent.
6 REFERENCES
ANSYS Users Manual, Release 10.0, ANSYS, Inc., 2005.
Chakrabarti, A., Chandra A. & Bhargava P. 2008. Finite Element Analysis of Concrete Columns confined with FRP
sheets. Journal of Reinforced Plastics and Composites 27
(12): 1349-1373
Fanning, P. 2001. Nonlinear Models of Reinforced and Posttensioned Concrete Beams. Electronic Journal of Structural Engineering, University College Dublin, Earlsfort
Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland, 12 September.
Feng, P., Lu, X.Z. & Ye, L.P. 2002. Experimental research and
FE analysis of square columns confined by FRP sheets under uniaxial compression. Proc. 17th Australasian Conference on the Mechanics of Structures and Materials. Gold
Coast, Australia: 71-76.
Li, G., Hedlund, S., Pang, S., Alaywan W., Eggers, J. & Abadie, C. 2003. Repair of damaged RC columns using fast
curing FRP composites. Composite Part B: Engineering 34:
261-271.
Tavarez, F.A. 2001. Simulation of Behavior of Composite Grid
Reinforced Concrete Beams Using Explicit Finite Element
Methods. Masters Thesis, University of WisconsinMadison, Madison, Wisconsin.
William, K. J. & Warnke, E. P. 1975. Constitutive Model for
the Triaxial Behavior of Concrete. Proceedings of International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering
19, ISMES, Bergamo, Italy.

7 NOMENCLATURE
P curc
P cc
CRE50M25
CRE50M40
CRE50M60
CRE50FO0
CRE50FO45
CRE50FO90

Ultimate load of reinforced concrete model

(without FRP)
Ultimate load of FRP wrapped reinforced
concrete
FRP wrapped RC column (M25) under eccentric
loading
FRP wrapped RC column (M40) under eccentric
loading
FRP wrapped RC column (M60) under eccentric
loading
FRP wrapped (0 degree) RC column under eccentric loading
FRP wrapped (45 degrees) RC column under eccentric loading.
FRP wrapped (90 degrees) RC column under eccentric Loading.