NUMERICAL MODEL AND EXPERIMENTAL BEHAVIOR OF CONCRETE BEAMS REINFORCED WITH PLAIN STAINLESS STEEL REBARS

Abstract

Stainless steel (SS) is gaining popularity as reinforcement of structural elements in Bangladesh mainly due to its enhanced corrosion resistance, improved performance against fire, and resilient behavior. This research investigates the flexural performance of concrete beam reinforced with locally manufactured stainless steel of the Grade 201 series. This experimental program included a total twelve reinforced concrete beams subjected four points bending test. Eight of them are SS reinforced concrete beams and the remaining four beams are reinforced by carbon steel (CS) as control specimens. Prior to conduct these tests, the mechanical properties of SS rebars and their bond strength in concrete are examined briefly. The tested beam specimens are divided into three categories based on their reinforcement ratio. Each group of beam consists of four specimens with low, medium, and high reinforcement ratios. The tested results of SS reinforced beams of each category are compared with that of the CS reinforced beams and also with the available codes. The experimental results in terms of the cracking moment showed a very good agreement with the code values as the differences of capacities within 10%. The ultimate moment capacity of tested SS reinforced beams also shows that theoretical value exceeds by a maximum of 30% compared to that of test results. Additionally, a series of finite element models are developed emulating the experimental program to understand the flexural response numerically. All twelve models are validated using finite element (FE) models in Abaqus v14.1 . Crack propagation and damage patterns of experimental specimens matched well with that of the FE simulations. The outcome in terms of loaddisplacement relationships extracted from finite element analysis also supports the experimental results with minor deviance. The overall outcome of this study suggests that using SS as reinforcement of the beam is quite reasonable and can be used confidently as an alternative to CS.