Experimental Investigation on the Effectiveness of Plate-Reinforced Concrete Composite Beam

An experimental analysis was conducted to investigate the use of external steel plates as tensile reinforcement in concrete beams with prefabricated cages and its failure pattern. A prefabricated cage with an external steel plate as tensile reinforcement and stirrups welded directly to the steel plate was used as the rebar cage for the reinforced concrete beam. This work aims to explore the feasibility of external steel plates as tension reinforcement in terms of their bending behavior and deformability till the failure stage. Twelve specimens with the same beam geometry and concrete grade were used. The ultimate load, load–deflection characteristics, and crack pattern have been studied with respect to the control beam. There are four sets of specimens, which are control beam, plate-reinforced concrete beam, control beam with bent-up bar, and plate-reinforced concrete beam with bent-up bar. Two approaches have been taken in this study: an in-house experimental investigation incorporating theoretical analysis and a numerical simulation utilizing finite element approach (FEA). The obtained experimental data indicated a firm agreement of around 94.7–100% with that of the reference beam with the reduction of crack width, number of cracks, and compressive strain on the steel plate-reinforced beams.