Experimental investigation of FRP confined reinforced concrete under impact loads

Abstract

Buildings and infrastructure may experience extreme circumstances such as terrorist bomb attacks, missile attacks and vehicle collisions and their key structural members, such as columns, could be shattered, leading to the collapse of the whole building and a large number of injuries and casualties. To protect these buildings and infrastructure against extreme loading, it is necessary to strengthen key structural components using advanced retrofit technologies. Recent research has demonstrated that FRP-confined concrete can significantly enhance structural members' strength and ductility under static loads and it is expected that this retrofit can also used to strengthen structural components under the impact and blast loads. In this paper, FRP tubes are used to confine concrete columns externally. A comprehensive experimental program was conducted to investigate the behaviour of normal strength of circular concrete specimens confined with FRP. The test program included a number of confined cylindrical concrete specimens under static loading, hammer dynamic loading and Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar impact loading (SHPB). The size of the specimens, and number of CFRP layers on the influence of the confinement effectiveness of FRP tubes are investigated. The recorded data can be used for validating numerical modeling in the further studies.