Externally Bonded FRP Reinforcement Design Project
Our AET 484 Design of Concrete Structures final project took reinforced concrete into the modern era, by designing an additional external Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) composite reinforcement necessary to retrofit a predesigned beam. Starting with a homework question in which we needed to determine the height, thickness, and steel reinforcement size/spacing of for a reinforced concrete beam with the spanning distance, dead/live loads, the concrete design compressive stress and the rebar yield stress. General Load and Resistance Factor Design (LFRD) beam design calculations were used as well as American Concrete Institute (ACI) Section 9.2 equations (9-1 through 9-7) and code knowledge were applied to determine the beam height, thickness, and steel reinforcement size/ spacing.
Next we were given the material properties of the FRP Composite and live/dead load increments that we needed to use to compute the maximum moment from factored loads. The class was broken into two groups, and mine was given a Live Load of 30% and a Dead Load of 10%. From there the objective was to determine how thick the new FRP strip had to be to increase the structure of the bridge.
I received a 100% for the project and an A in the course during the Summer Term of 2013.