Evaluation of Deformation for Steel Fiber Concrete Beams with BFRP Tendons Eroded by Seawater under Cyclic Loading

Abstract

Steel fiber-reinforced concrete (SFRC) beams with fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) bars are promising new composite structures. To investigate the durability of BFRP-SFRC beams, eleven beams were fabricated and conducted via four-point bending tests under cyclic loading. The experimental variables included BFRP reinforcement ratios, pre-cracked widths and environments (Natural or Seawater erosion). Experiment results revealed that the load–deflection curves of BFRP-SFRC beams showed bilinear growth. With the increase in loading and unloading cycles, the peak load and energy consumption of the tested beams decreased, and the impact of loading and unloading cycles on the flexural performances of the BFRP-SFRC beams enhanced with the increase in displacement. Under the same load, as the pre-crack width increases, the deflection of the BFRP-SFRC beam decreases. The deflection of the beam with a pre-crack width of 0.4 mm was 1.34 times than that of the beam without a pre-crack at the load of 100 kN. What is more, the pre-crack width had a bad effect on the energy consumed by the BFRP-SFRC beams. Compared with no pre-crack beam, the energy consumed by the beams with 0.02, 0.2 and 0.4 mm pre-crack width were decreased by 1.5%, 7.8% and 11.0% at the 18 mm displacement, respectively. Significantly, the effect of sea water erosion on the energy consumption of tested beams with high BFRP reinforcement ratios were smaller than that of tested beams with low BFRP reinforcement ratios. Finally, a calculation model of deformation of BFRP-SFRC beams under seawater erosion environments was proposed based on the effective moment of inertia methods. Compared with the existing calculation methods, this model was better correlated with the experimental results.