International Concrete Abstracts Portal

Noncorrosive fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) reinforcement presents an attractive alternative to conventional steel reinforcement, which is prone to corrosion, especially in harsh environments exposed to deicing salt or seawater. However, FRP rebars’ lower axial stiffness leads to greater crack widths when FRP reinforcing bars elongate, resulting in significantly lower flexural stiffness for FRP-reinforcing bar-reinforced concrete members. The deeper cracks and larger crack widths also reduce the depth of the compression zone. Consequently, both the aggregate interlock and the compression zone for shear resistance are significantly reduced. Additionally, due to their limited tensile ductility, FRP reinforcing bars can rupture before the concrete crushes, potentially resulting in sudden and catastrophic member failure. Therefore, ACI Committee 440 states that through a compression-controlled design, FRP-reinforcing bar-reinforced concrete members can be intentionally designed to fail by allowing the concrete to crush before the FRP reinforcing bars rupture. However, this design approach does not yield an equivalent ductile behavior when compared to steel-reinforcing bar-reinforced concrete members, resulting in a lower strength reduction, ϕ, value of 0.65. In this regard, using FRP-reinforcing bar-reinforced ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC) members offers a novel solution, providing high strength, stiffness, ductility, and corrosion-resistant characteristics. UHPC has a very low water-to-cementitious materials ratio (0.18 to 0.25), which results in dense particle packing. This very dense microstructure and low water ratio not only improves compressive strength but also delays liquid ingress. UHPC can be tailored to achieve exceptional compressive ductility, with a maximum usable compressive strain greater than 0.015. Unlike conventional designs where ductility is provided by steel reinforcing bars, UHPC can be used to achieve the required ductility for a flexural member, allowing FRP reinforcing bars to be designed to stay elastic. The high member ductility also justifies the use of a higher strength reduction factor, ϕ, of 0.9. This research, validated through large-scale experiments, explores this design concept by leveraging UHPC’s high compressive ductility, cracking resistance, and shear strength, along with a high quantity of noncorrosive FRP reinforcing bars. The increased amount of longitudinal reinforcement helps maintain the flexural stiffness (controlling deflection under service loads), bond strength, and shear strength of the members. Furthermore, the damage-resistant capability of UHPC and the elasticity of FRP reinforcing bars provide a structural member with a restoring force, leading to reduced residual deflection and enhanced resilience.

Ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC) is considered a material with high strength and good ductility. However, it was found in the experiments that the ductility of slender UHPC walls at high axial-load ratios (ALRs) was not as good as expected. The improvement on the ALR limit of the walls by using UHPC is limited. Thus, this study theoretically investigated the ALR limit of slender UHPC wall-type piers. Equivalent UHPC stress block and equivalent steel strip methods were used to calculate the bearing capacity of UHPC wall-type piers. The calculation results were in good agreement with the summarized experimental and numerical results. Based on the experimental observations and the proposed calculation method, the failure mechanism of the UHPC wall-type piers was theoretically analyzed. Equations for determining the ALR limit of UHPC wall-type piers and suggestions for designing UHPC wall-type piers were proposed. It was suggested that high-strength steel bars should be used with caution in T-section UHPC wall-type piers, especially when the reinforcement ratio is higher than 3%. This study provided references for the compilation of the Chinese Code “Technical Specification for Ultra-High-Performance Concrete Structures.”

This paper investigates the mechanical characteristics (encompassing compressive strength, flexural strength, toughness, and impact resistance) of ultra-high-performance fiber-reinforced concrete (UHPFRC) incorporating polypropylene (PP) and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) fibers. An experimental program was conducted, based on which the polymer and metallic fibers were used at the same fiber content, and different sets of single and hybrid fiber reinforced composites were fabricated and tested. Despite the fact that it has been exhibited through previous research that the hybridized PVA-PP fibers do not result in the development of the mechanical characteristics of engineered cementitious composites (ECCs), the UHPC composites incorporating such hybrid fibers show augmented levels of toughness, flexural strength, and resistance to impact loads. A comparison was also made to assess the potentiality of the used fibers in terms of environmental impact and cost. Based on the results, hybridization with PVA and PP fibers leads to remarkable improvement in technical performance and mitigation of the economic and environmental impact of UHPFRC composites.

This study reviewed, synthesized, and extended the service life prediction models for conventional reinforced concrete (RC) structures to those with advanced concrete materials (that is, high-performance- concrete [HPC] and ultra-high-performance concrete [UHPC]), and corrosion-resistant steel reinforcements (that is, epoxy-coated [EC] steel, high chromium [HC] steel, and stainless- steel [SS]) subjected to chloride attack. The developed corrosion initiation and propagation models were validated using field and experimental data from literature. A case study was performed to compare the corrosion initiation and propagation times, and service life of RC structures with different concretes and reinforcements in various environments. It was found that UHPC structures surpassed 100 years of service life in all studied environments. HPC enhanced the service life of conventional normal-strength concrete (NC) structures by over three times. In addition, the use of corrosion-resistant reinforcement prolonged the service life of RC structures. The use of HC steel or epoxy-coated steel doubled the service life in both NC and HPC. SS reinforcement yielded service lives exceeding 100 years in all concrete types, except for NC structures in marine tidal zones, which showed an 88-year service life.

The mechanical and durability properties of ultra-high-performance fiber-reinforced concrete (UHPFRC) are superior to conventional concrete. However, the available stress-strain models of UHPFRC are relatively complicated and cannot be applied to the analytical analysis of loaded beams for the ultimate and serviceability limit states. In this paper, a piecewise linear axial stress-strain relationship is proposed. The stress-strain relationship is further simplified as a rectangular stress block, and the stress of concrete during the whole loading process is accordingly evaluated. The development of the beam hinge at the midspan is described in detail, and it is then incorporated into the concrete stress blocks to derive an analytical approach and a closed-form solution for modeling the whole loading process of UHPFRC beams. Through comparisons with experimental results collected from the literature, it is validated that the proposed approaches can reasonably predict the whole loading process, including the ultimate strength, flexural rigidity, and ductility of UHPFRC beams, which only require material properties without any experimental calibration.