Challenges, Opportunities and Solutions in Structural Engineering and Construction Ghafoori (ed.

.) 2010 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-0-415-56809-8

Modeling of concrete beams prestressed with AFRP tendons

Y.J. Kim
Department of Civil Engineering, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND, USA

ABSTRACT: This paper presents modeling of concrete beams prestressed with aramid fiber reinforced polymer (AFRP) tendons, based on the iterative sectional analysis and the finite element analysis (FEA) models. Two experimental beams were selected with different beam dimensions and different reinforcement ratios to validate the developed modeling approaches. Detailed comparisons between the experimental beams and the predictive models are made in terms of the flexural responses. The developed models adequately predict the experimental data with a maximum error of less than 5% at ultimate. 1 INTRODUCTION 2 PRESTRESSED CONCRETE MEMBERS WITH FRP

Corrosion damage of steel tendons in a prestressed concrete member significantly influences the performance of the member. Various environmental factors contribute to the corrosion of steel tendons, for example, chloride, freezing-and-thawing, and temperature (Meta & Gerwick 1982; Sherman et al. 1996). Fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) tendons may provide superior durability to conventional steel tendons. FRP tendons consist of unidirectional fibers embedded in a matrix resin. The resins are usually thermosetting and epoxy is widely used. The non-metallic reinforcement provides a number of benefits, namely, favorable strength-to-weight ratio, good resistance to chemicals, low relaxation, and outstanding fatigue resistance (Grace & Abdel-Sayed 2000). Typically, two types of fibers are used for prestressed concrete applications, such as aramid fibers and carbon fibers. Carbon FRP (CFRP) provides higher strength and modulus in comparison to aramid FRP (AFRP), whereas the material cost of CFRP is more expensive than that of AFRP. Therefore, in order to use the structural advantages of FRPs with reasonable material costs, AFRP tendons may be recommended for prestressed concrete members. Although numerous research has been reported on prestressed concrete with FRP tendons, majority of the publications focused on experimental investigations (McKay & Erki 1993; Taerwe & Matthys 1995; Saafi & Toutanji 1998; Lees & Burgoyne 1999; Grace & Abdel-Sayed 2000). Limited efforts have been made to theoretically predict the behavior of FRP-prestressed members (Pisani 1998; Zou 2003b; Youakim & Karbhari 2007). This paper presents two theoretical modeling approaches to predict the flexural behavior of concrete beams prestressed with AFRP tendons, including the iterative sectional analysis and 3-dimensional finite element analysis models.

As briefly mentioned in the previous section, FRPprestressed concrete members include AFRP or CFRP tendons. Glass FRP (GFRP) materials may not be recommended for prestressing applications because glass fibers are susceptible to alkali reaction in concrete which may accelerate creep-rupture of the prestressed GFRP tendons (Dolan 1999). McKay and Erki (1993) examined the load-carrying capacity of concrete beams prestressed with AFRP tendons, including time-dependent relaxation behavior of the prestressed AFRP tendons. Prior to cracking of the beams, there was no difference of the flexural stiffness between the beams prestressed with AFRP tendons and steel tendons. A significant drop of the stiffness was observed in the case of the beam with steel tendons when the applied load exceeded the yield load of the beam, whereas no such a change was found in the AFRPbeam, given that AFRP tendons did not demonstrate yield characteristics. The relaxation of the prestressed AFRP tendons was less than 8% in 10,000 hours after jacking. Niitani et al. (1997) reported the durable performance of AFRP tendons that did not show any changes in the mechanical properties after 6 years inside concrete beams. Saafi and Toutanji (1998) tested prestressed concrete beams with bonded or unbonded AFRP tendons. The load-carrying capacity of the bonded beams was greater than that of the unbonded beams. The beam prestressed with a combination of bonded and unbonded AFRP tendons showed higher ductility than other beams. Lees and Burgoyne (1999) tested concrete beams prestressed with AFRP tendons, including various bond parameters such as fully-bonded, unbonded, and partiallybonded tendons. The prestressed concrete beams with fully-bonded AFRP tendons showed the highest loadcarrying capacity; however, limited ductility was

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Table 1.

Beam details and material properties. AFRP Prestress level (%) 60 Area (mm2 ) 58 Ultimate strain (%) 3.7 Modulus (GPa) 68 Concrete Strength (MPa) 40.3 Modulus (GPa) 25.4

Beam B1 B1FEA60 B1Iter60 B1FEA40 B1Iter40 B1FEA20 B1Iter20 B1FEA0 B1Iter0 AR21 AR21FEA55 AR21Iter55 AR21FEA40 AR21Iter40 AR21FEA20 AR21Iter20 AR21FEA0 AR21Iter0

Description Experiment FEA Iterative FEA Iterative FEA Iterative FEA Iterative Experiment FEA Iterative FEA Iterative FEA Iterative FEA Iterative

40 20 0 55 51 2.4 60 56.4 31.5

40 20 0

found. The beams with unbonded AFRP tendons exhibited improved ductility with a low load-carrying capacity (25%) in comparison to the fully bonded case. The beams with partially bonded AFRP tendons showed a high load-carrying capacity with high ductility. Grace and Abdel-Sayed (2000) tested double-tee concrete beams prestressed with a combination of bonded and unbonded CFRP tendons under various loading configurations, including vibration, impact, fatigue, and static loads. They found that there was no notable damage in the CFRP tendons when the beams failed in flexure and fatigue performance of the beams was satisfactory (i.e., survived after 7 million cycles). Zou (2003a) compared the performance of concrete beams prestressed with AFRP or CFRP tendons to that with conventional steel tendons. The AFRPprestressed beam showed reduced crack spacing in comparison to the steel-prestressed beams. The beam with CFRP tendons exhibited lower residual deflections compared to the beams with steel tendons that had yielded. The energy stored in the beams with prestressed FRP tendons was mainly elastic. ACI 440.4R-04 (ACI 2004) provides a design guide of the use of FRP tendons for prestressed concrete. The document includes anchorage issues, flexural and shear design, bond and serviceability, and design examples. 3 BEAM DETAILS

1992, Sen et al.1999), as shown in Table 1. Details of the beams are shown in figure 1. The AFRPreinforcement ratios were 0.15% and 0.36% for the B1 beam (McKay 1992) and AR21 beam (Sen et al. 1999), respectively. The identification code in Table 1 includes the base-beam (B1 or AR21), type of predictive model (FEA or Iter ), and the level of prestress (e.g., 60 and 55 are the percentage of the ultimate strength). Typical material properties used for this study are also shown in Table 1. Both of the beams were simply supported and tested under four point bending. The load was monotonically applied until failure of the beams occurred. To study the effect of various prestressing levels in the AFRP tendons, additional predictive models were given (Table 1).

4 4.1

PREDICTIVE MODELS Nonlinear iterative model

To predict the flexural behavior of the concrete beams prestressed with AFRP tendons, a nonlinear sectional analysis model was developed. The model was based on force equilibrium and strain compatibility. The following was assumed: Plane sections remain plane before and after bending. Slippage between materials does not occur. Premature anchorage failure does not happen.

Two experimental concrete beams prestressed with AFRP tendons were selected for this study (McKay

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P/2 800

P/2

Steel (100 mm each)

150

300

AFRP

T AFRP

T AFRP

2000

AFRP (28.8 mm2 each)

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(a)
990 P/2 P/2 114

Figure 2. Iterative sectional analysis model: (a) typical cross section at midspan; (b) strain diagram; (c) stresses and forces before cracking; (d) stresses and forces after cracking.
150

2250

AFRP (25.5 mm2 each)

(b)
Figure 1. AR21. Beam details (unit: mm): (a) Beam B1; (b) Beam

AFRP

(a)

Concrete

The beam fails when the concrete strain reaches the crushing strain or the AFRP strain reaches the rupture strain (depending on the product, given in Table 1). Tension stiffening after cracking does not influence the flexural behavior of the beam. A typical sectional analysis model is shown in figure 2. The concrete was modeled using an equivalent stress block using Eq. 1 (Collins and Mitchell 1987), rather than a full integration of nonlinear stress profiles of the concrete. c 1 c c0 3 c0
2

(b)

(c)
Figure 3. FEA model of B1FEA60 (unit: m): (a) mesh formulation (cut-away view to show the reinforcement); (b) initial camber; (c) deflection at ultimate.

and =

4 c /c0 6 2c /c0 (1)

where and are the stress block factors, c is the concrete strain at an arbitrary load level, and c0 is the concrete strain at the specified concrete strength of fc . Fully-cracked sectional properties were used when the tension stress at the bottom of the concrete beam reached the modulus of rupture ( fr = 0.6 fc ), as shown in figure 2(d). The modeling procedure is briefly summarized as follows: 1. Establish an expression for the tension force (T ), including the AFRP tendons with an initial prestressing force, which is a function of the AFRP strain (AFRP ). The tension force should be in equilibrium with the compression force (C ) in concrete that is a function of the neutral axis depth (c). 2. Using similar triangles, determine the strains in the AFRP (AFRP ) as a function of the concrete strain (c ) and the neutral axis depth (c), then substitute them in Step 1.

3. Assume the concrete strain (c ) and then establish the equivalent rectangular stress block using Equation 1. 4. Solve for the neutral axis depth (c) using force equilibrium (T = C ) through a trial and error process. 5. Check whether the AFRP strain (AFRP ) is less than its rupture strain (fu ). If AFRP > fu , stop the iteration, otherwise go to the next step. Also check the concrete strain (c ) as in the case of the AFRP strain. 6. Calculate the curvature of the section. 7. Calculate the internal moment. 8. Go to Step 3 and increase the concrete strain (c ). Conduct the iteration until the AFRP tendon ruptures or the concrete crushes. 4.2 Finite element analysis model The general-purpose finite element analysis (FEA) software package ANSYS was used to predict the flexural behavior of the concrete beams prestressed with AFRP tendons. A typical FEA model is shown in figure 3. The concrete was modeled using threedimensional composite elements having 8 nodes with 3 translational degrees of freedom per node. The concrete element was able to simulate crushing of

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concrete in compression and cracking in tension. The behavior of the concrete was modeled based on the William and Warnke model (ANSYS 2008). A smeared crack analogy was adopted for the concrete element, rather than discrete cracking. The unidirectional AFRP tendon was modeled using threedimensional spar elements including 2 nodes with the same degrees of freedom as in the concrete element. The AFRP tendon included a linear elastic response until complete rupture occurred, with the material properties shown in Table 1. The prestressing effect was given by applying initial strains in the tendon element. A relatively fine mesh (i.e., maximum dimension length of 40 mm) was formulated. Nonlinear iterative solutions were conducted using the modified Newton-Raphson method with a constant stiffness predictor. Flexural loads were incrementally applied until the concrete failed or the AFRP ruptured. 5 VALIDATION OF THE MODELS

Figure 4 shows a typical comparison of the loaddeflection response at midspan between the experi-

mental beams and the FEA models. The flexural response of the beams with prestressed AFRP tendons was essentially bilinear with a transition at the cracking load. This is due to the linear characteristics of AFRP tendons that do not show any yield plateau. Beam B1 (experimental) was unloaded at about 80 kN (B-1-1) and reloaded until complete failure occurred (B-1-2), whereas the FEA model (B1FEA60) included only a single loading step (Fig. 4a). The fist loading cycle in the experiment (B-1-1) provided the cracking load and the second cycle (B-1-2) exhibited the ultimate load. Good prediction of the FEA model was made, including an error of 24.1% and 2.2% for the cracking load and the ultimate load, respectively. The relatively large error in the cracking load may be due to the fact that the modulus of rupture was input in the FEA model using the code provision that was mentioned in the previous section, whereas the actual cracking stress could be slightly different from the code equation. The prediction of Beam AR21 was also satisfactory (Fig. 4b), including an error of 4.6% for the ultimate load. It should be noted that the FEA predictions in

(a)

(a)

(b)
Figure 4. Comparison of the experimental and the FEA prediction: (a) B1 vs. B1FEA60; (b) AR21 vs. AR21FEA55.

(b)
Figure 5. Comparison of the FEA and the iterative sectional analysis model: (a) B1FEA60; (b) AR21FEA55.

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CONCLUDING REMARKS

0%

20% 60% 40%

(a)

This paper has presented two theoretical modeling approaches to predict the flexural behavior of concrete beams prestressed with AFRP tendons, including the nonlinear iterative sectional analysis and the FEA models. Good agreement between the experimental and theoretical beams was made including a maximum error of less than 5% at ultimate. According to the parametric study on various levels of initial prestressing forces in the AFRP tendons, there was no notable effect on the failure of the tendons, whereas the cracking load of the prestressed concrete beams was significantly influenced by the prestressing level. The on-going research includes an investigation of ductility issues for lightly reinforced prestressed concrete members with AFRP tendons.

20% 0% 60% 40%

REFERENCES
ACI 440.4R-04. 2004. Prestressing concrete structures with FRP tendons. ACI Committee 440, American Concrete Institute. ANSYS. 2008. Online manual, ANSYS Inc. Collins, M.P. & Mitchell, D. 1987. Prestressed concrete basics. Canadian Prestressed Concrete Institute. Dolan, C.W. 1999. FRP prestressing in the USA, Concrete International, 21(10): 2124. Grace, N.F. & Abdel-Sayed, G. 2000. Behavior of carbon fiber-reinforced prestressed concrete skew bridges. Structural Journal, ACI, 97(1): 2635. Lees, J.M. & Burgoyne, C.J. 1999. Experimental study of influence of bond on flexural behavior of concrete beams pretensioned with aramid fiber reinforced plastics. Structural Journal, ACI, 96(3): 377385. McKay, K.S. 1992. Aramid fibre reinforced plastic tendons in pretensioned concrete applications, M.Eng. Thesis, Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, ON, Canada McKay, K.S. & Erki, M.A. 1993. Flexural behaviour of concrete beams pretensioned with aramid fibre reinforced plastic tendons. Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering, 20: 688695. Mehta, P.K. & Gerwick, B.C. 1982. Cracking-corrosion interaction in concrete exposed to marine environment. Concrete International, ACI, 4(10): 4551. Niitani, K., Tezuka, M. & Tamura, T. 1997. Flexural behaviour of prestressed concrete beams using AFRP pre-tensioning tendons. Non-metallic (FRP) Reinforcement for Concrete Structures (FRPRCS-3): 663670. Pisani, M.A. 1998. A numerical survey on the behaviour of beams pre-stressed with FRP cables. Construction and Building Materials, 12: 221232. Saafi, M. & Toutanji, H. 1998. Flexural capacity of prestressed concrete beams reinforced with aramid fiber reinforced polymer (AFRP) rectangular tendons. Construction and Building Materials, 12: 245249. Sen R., Shahawy, M., Rosas, J. & Sukumar, S. 1999. Durability of aramid fiber reinforced plastic pretensioned elements under tidal/thermal cycles. Structural Journal, ACI, 96(1): 95104.

(b)
Figure 6. Variation of FRP strains depending on prestressing level: (a) B1-parametric; (b) AR21-parametric.

figure 4 were shifted to zero deflection when the beams were initially loaded in order to provide an appropriate comparison to the experimental data that had been reported without upward camber deflection. Figure 5 shows the moment-curvature relationship between the FEA and the iterative sectional analysis model. The curvature values of the FEA prediction were obtained based on the compression strains in concrete and the tension strains in the AFRP tendons. An abrupt jump of the curvatures immediately after the cracking of the beams was due to a sudden decrease in the moment of inertia, which is particularly important for lightly reinforced concrete members ( = 0.15% and 0.36% for Beams B1 and AR21, respectively). Figure 6 shows the strain variation in the AFRP tendons depending on the initial prestressing levels. The failure of the AFRP tendons was independent of the level of the prestress, whereas the cracking load of the prestressed beams was significantly influenced by the prestress level.

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Sherman, M.R., McDonald, D.B. & Pfeifer, D.W. 1996. Durability aspects of precast prestressed concrete Part 2: chloride permeability study. PCI Journal, 41(4): 7695. Taerwe, L. & Matthys, S. 1995. Structural behaviour of concrete slabs prestressed with AFRP bars. Non-metallic (FRP) Reinforcement for Concrete Structures (FRPRCS-2): 421429. Youakim, S.A. & Karbhari, V.M. 2007. An approach to determine long-term behavior of concrete members prestressed with FRP tendons. Construction and Building Materials, 21: 10521060.

Zou, P.X.W. 2003a. Flexural behavior and deformability of fiber reinforced polymer prestressed concrete beams. Journal of Composites for Construction, ASCE, 7(4): 275284. Zou, P.X.W. 2003b. Theoretical study on short-term and longterm deflections of fiber reinforced polymer prestressed concrete beams. Journal of Composites for Construction, ASCE, 7(4): 285291.

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