Fire testing of concrete beams with fibre reinforced plastic rebar

The behaviour of glass fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP) rebar reinforced concrete beams when exposed to fire is presented in this paper. The experimental programme involved fire tests based on British Standard 476 on two full-scale GFRP rebar reinforced concrete beams with dimensions in cross-section 350 mm×400 mm and 4400 mm total length with a span length of 4250 mm. The beams were designed and constructed according to Eurocode 2 and ACI-440. The purpose of this work was to evaluate the fire resistance of the GFRP reinforced concrete (RC) beams. GFRP rebars with thermoset resin were used for reinforcing beam 1 and GFRP rebars manufactured with thermoplastic resin were used for reinforcing beam 2. Shear reinforcement for beam 1 was GFRP stirrups and for beam 2 steel stirrups were used. Degradation in the flexural capacity due to fire was evaluated and compared. In this study, loaded heating tests were implemented with the aim of collecting basic data for the validation of a model presented in preceding papers by the authors.