Short term testing of hybrid T beam made of new prepreg material

The civil engineering industry is constantly striving for ways to improve design and construction technologies to obtain more efficient solutions to engineering problems. It has long been recognized that, in the area of construction that utilizes reinforced concrete beams, the region of the beam below the neutral axis (NA) is wasteful of material. The only function that the low tensile strength concrete has in this situation is to locate the steel rebars and protect them from aggressive environments. This latter property is not completely fulfilled since the concrete will crack in the zone where there is tension in the loaded beam and Will allow aggressive substances. to attack the steel. It is proposed in this paper that the zone of a T cross-sectional beam below the NA is removed and replaced by an advanced polymer composite (APC) material. Two designs of a T beam were analyzed: one in which the failure mode is by buckling of the web and one by shear failure in the bond along the interface between the concrete and permanent APC shuttering. The test results have indicated that the failure mode for this type of design is buckling of the webs followed by concrete crushing and buckling of the permanent glass fiber-reinforced plastic shuttering.