Bending and Shear Behavior of a Composite Beam Strengthened and Double-Confined with FRP-Jacket

Construction and building industries are responsible for the depletion of large amounts of non-renewable resources. Reducing the raw materials consumption by using bio-products is considered as a significant step to achieve a sustainable construction industry. In this connection, an innovative composite beam strengthened and double-confined with flexural and shear continuous FRP-Jacket was introduced in the present study. The proposed technology consists on substituting the tensile Portland cement based concrete by a modified eco-friendly one, in which the mix-proportion was designed by substituting a partial cement amount by dry clay one, and hydraulic lime additions. An experimental investigation completed by theoretical modeling based on shear deformations beam theory are carried out in order to assess the bending and the shear performances of the proposal design under four-point flexural load. Experiment and modeling results comparison in terms of bearing capacity, stresses distribution and cement reducing presents a satisfactory agreement and shows that the double-confinement system adopted produces a noticeable increment in strength and deformability compared to conventional concrete beams.