Effect of confinement level, aspect ratio and concrete strength on the cyclic stress-strain behavior of FRP-confined concrete prisms

Behavior of rectangular concrete columns confined with FRP composites depends on several parameters, including unconfined concrete strength, confinement level, aspect ratio of cross-section (defined as the depth/width of the cross-section), and the sharpness of the section corners. For modeling the cyclic stress-strain behavior of FRP-confined rectangular concrete columns, effect of column parameters on the cyclic behavior of these columns should be examined properly. In this paper, effects of unconfined concrete strength, confinement level and the aspect ratio of cross-section are studied. The test database includes 10 prisms from recent study of authors and 18 prisms from a new experiment. Results of tests show that some aspects of cyclic behavior of FRP-confined concrete prisms such as envelope curve and stress deterioration are unaffected by the considered parameters. Results also indicate that the plastic strain decreases as the unconfined concrete strength increases, but it is independent of the aspect ratio and the confinement level. While the reloading path in all specimens was almost linear, the unloading path was highly nonlinear and was affected by unconfined concrete strength. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.