Flexural behavior of hybrid concrete beams reinforced with ultra-high performance concrete bars

As steel-fiber reinforced ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) has flexural tensile strength exceeding 30 MPa, a novel idea of utilizing UHPC bars as tension reinforcement to provide flexural strength has been explored in this work. Normal concrete beam specimens, reinforced with precast deformed UHPC tension bars, were tested in four-point bend test to determine the flexural strength and observe behavior. Test results show that UHPC bars function adequately, developing flexural tensile strength of about 30 MPa at the peak load without any bond slip. The beams show post-peak load ductility with softening in which deflection increases with progressive reduction in residual strength.