Finite element analysis of beams strengthened in flexure with carbon fiber reinforced polymer plates

This study investigates the overall behavior and performance of R.C. beams with CFRP plates for improving the infrastructure buildings performance. The parameters studied include different widths and thickness of fiber reinforced polymer plates along the beams tension face. For this analysis, a computer program (ABAQUS CAE.18) is used. To achieve the aim, two sets of beams have been analyzed. The first group consists of five specimens strengthened with CFRP plates of thickness 1.2 mm and width (25, 50, 75, 100 and 140) mm in flexure, the second group of beams also consist of five specimens strengthened with CFRP plates similar to the first group but with thickness of 2.4 mm and the control beam is without CFRP. A variety of CFRP width and thickness applications were tested to determine the ultimate strength of the beam specimens. A comparison is made between the experimental results from previous study done by (K. Shadhan) and the numerical model. The comparison indicates that the results of the numerical modeling were in good agreement with the experimental results (1.7% difference in ultimate strength for the specimen without CFRP strengthening and 1.6% difference for the specimen strengthened with CFRP plate of thickness 1.2 and width 100mm). Moreover, it can be noticed that the strengthening with CFRP plate with thickness of 1.2mm, the ultimate strength increases with the increase of the plate width and the increment reach 45% when plate width 75mm compared with specimen without CFRP. But, the ultimate strength decrease when CFRP plate width increased to 140mm (3.6% compared with specimen strengthened with 75mm CFRP plate). The strengthening with CFRP plates of 2.4 mm thick increases the ultimate strength more than when compared to beams reinforced with 1.2 mm thick CFRP plates of the same width (7.2%, 0.3%, 0.7%, 0.6%, 1.1%) for widths (25, 50, 75, 100, 140) mm, respectively.