BEHAVIOUR OF STEEL I-BEAM WITH ARAMID FIBRE REINFORCED PLOYMER

Steel structures play an important role in civil industry and therefore more attention is required for strengthening and rehabilitation of such structures. Studies on enhancing structures have significantly increased recently. Different methods exist for strengthening various structures. Use of FRP appears to be an excellent solution. In this dissertation, the performance of steel I-beam with Uniaxial Aramid Fibre Reinforced Polymer (AFRP) is studied.Three different parameter of strengthening were considered. The first type of beams focuses on enhancing the strength of steel in flexure, the second focuses on increasing the shear strength while third focuses on increasing combined flexure-shear strength of the beams. Total ten beams were chosen having same length and properties. One of which was tested without AFRP to facilitate comparison of their behaviour to the other beams and remaining are strengthened beams. The results shows that there was slight increment in load resisting capacity as well as increase in deflection of steel beam.