Improving out-of-plane behavior of aerated concrete walls with carbon fiber-reinforced polymer strips


ANIL Ö., Tatayoglu M.

JOURNAL OF REINFORCED PLASTICS AND COMPOSITES, vol.31, no.23, pp.1601-1615, 2012 (SCI-Expanded) identifier identifier

Abstract

Aerated concrete walls, mostly used in reinforced concrete structures, can be damaged under dynamic forces such as earthquake and can create danger for the life of the occupants. Many experimental studies have proved that infill walls have high strength against lateral forces acting in plane, but strength against same forces is quite low out-of-plane. Therefore, an experimental study is conducted for increasing out-of-plane strength of the aerated concrete walls and obtaining improvements at other behaviors. Out of the 11 specimens manufactured, one is considered as reference specimen, and the rest are strengthened with carbon fiber-reinforced polymer strips with different layouts. Test specimens are tested at four points by bending setup for simulating out-of-plane lateral force. The variables that are examined in this study are carbon fiber-reinforced polymer strip layout and carbon fiber-reinforced polymer anchorage usage. The performance of the proposed method of strengthening is determined by examining stiffness, ductility, energy dissipation capacity, and failure modes. ACI 440 Committee report is used for calculating the capacity of the specimens. This technique, strengthening aerated concrete walls by using carbon fiber-reinforced polymer strips, has enabled the improvement in strength by 12.5 times, ductility ratio 6.1 times and energy capacity 102.4 times.