Non-prismatic reinforced concrete (RC) beams are widely used for various practical purposes, including enhancing architectural aesthetics and increasing the overall thickness in the support area above the column, which gives high assurance to services that this will not result in the distortion of construction features and can reduce heights. The hollow sections (recess) can also be used for the maintenance of large structural sections and the safe passage of utility lines of water, gas, telecommunications, electricity, etc. They are generally used in large and complex civil engineering works like bridges. This study conducted a numerical study using the commercial finite element software ANSYS version 15 for analysing RC beams, hollow longitudinally sectioned and retrofitted with carbon fibre reinforced polymers (CFRPs), which were subjected to concentrated vertical loads. The numerical analysis results on the simulated beam models were in excellent agreements with the previous experimental test results. This convergence was confirmed by a statistical analysis, which considered the correlation coefficients, individual arithmetic means and standard deviations for all the calculated deflections of the simulated beam models. A proposed numerical simulation model with the hypotheses can be considered suitable for modelling the behaviours of simple supported non-prismatic RC beams under vertical concentrated loads. The numerical results showed that altering the cross-section from solid to hollow could reduce the load carrying capacities of the beams by up to 53% and increase the corresponding deflections by up to 40%, respectively. Using steel pipes for making recesses could enhance the loading capacity by up to 56%, increase the ductility, and reduce the corresponding deflections by up to 30%, respectively. Finally, it was found that bonding the CFRP sheets in the lower middle tensile areas of the hollow beams could improve the resistance and reduce the deformations by up to 27%. The failure patterns for all the numerical models were shear failure. The cylinder compressive strength could be used as a mechanical parameter for modelling and assessing the structural behaviours of the beam models, as its increase could improve the load carrying capacities and reduce the deflections by 30–50%.

Bond between reinforcing steel bar and concrete has a critical influence on the structural behavior of reinforced concrete members. The nature of the concrete makes the bond characteristics inherently variable. The variability of the bond affects some of the more practical parameters such as the embedded length, bar diameter and cover thickness, which, in turn, considerably influence the length of the reinforcing elements used in the fabrication of the composite. In this investigation, the bond strength of normal weight, lightweight and fibrous lightweight concretes are investigated by use pull-out test results. The embedded lengths, bar diameter and cover thickness are taken as variables. The experimental work indicated that steel fibers specimens exhibited increase in bond strength about (75.45%), (126.36%) and (174.54%) when using (0.5%), (1%) and (1.5%) of total volume steel fibers respectively. Also, the specimens that are poured with (16mm) bar diameter have bond strength lower than that of small bar diameter for two types of concrete. In all concrete specimens, the specimens with large embedded length and concrete cover tend to fail by bond strength higher than that of small embedded length and concrete cover.

Hollow Lightweight Concrete (HLC) beams are gaining popularity due to low cost and low weight as compared with the Solid Lightweight Concrete (SLC) beams. HLC and SLC beams decrease in weight, without losing strength and durability. Flexural and shear behavior of reinforced HLC and SLC beams made with sawdust under two-point load is investigated in this study. The ultimate deformation efficiency and shear resistant mechanism of HLC beams are discussed experimentally and compared with other SLC beams. The beams, tested in this research, are rectangular.Beams were designed and constructed as 12 * 23 * 100 cm. Six concrete beam models were prepared including three SLC beams without the hollow and the other three HLC beams poured hollow 50 * 7.5 cm throughout the all beam of 100 cm. All beams were split according to the distance between vertical stirrups, these stirrups were divided into three specimens 45, 13, and 6 cm. By analyzing six experimental test beams, in this research, investigated the effect of diverse factors on the shear of beams. On comparison with normal concrete beams, this work describes the failure of mechanism, process, and ductility. The first crack loads, ultimate loads, load-deflection behavior, crack patterns and shapes of failure were investigated in this study. The experimental results show the ultimate performance of HLC beams are pure shear and controlled by yielding tension and compression steel bars. Also, it is found that the measured size and configuration of the hollow opening had an effect on the load-carry capacity and mid-span deflection of HLC beams. Thus, the design and construction details of beams can be additionally customized to reduce the total cost and weight of the HLC beams.