Fiber Composite Bar for Reinforced Concrete Construction

Behavior of concrete beams reinforced with Glass-Fiber-Reinforced-Plastic (GFRP) bars was experimentally investigated. Two types of reinforcements were considered; longitudinal or flexural reinforcement and transverse or shear reinforcement. For each of the two types of reinforcements, three concrete beams were tested to failure. The behavior of each beam was characterized by its load-deflection response to failure. The study was mainly focused on experimentally determining the feasibility of GFRP bars as reinforcement for concrete structures. The results indicated that the plastic bars performed reasonably well in the beams tested.