Abstract
This work focused on material and Global Warming Potential (GWP) savings for the construction of textile-reinforced concrete (TRC) beams made of carbon fabrics (without steel rebars), which were characterized by their flexural behavior. Two beam design approaches were explored for material and GWP savings: (1) regular TRC beam designs, in which the steel rebars were replaced by a carbon textile, which eliminated the need for a thick concrete protective layer that is required in steel reinforcement; and (2) optimized truss-like TRC beams that were based on topology optimization, which distributed the concrete and fabric at their optimal locations. The aim was to minimize concrete consumption through the development of lightweight structural concrete elements with irregular shapes. This exploited the ability of the fabrics to conform to complex shapes and their corrosion resistance. Examples of concrete beams with optimal configurations that were demonstrated in this work showed the potential for significant savings in concrete and reinforcement and the related GWP. In addition, weight was significantly reduced when the textile was used as reinforcement instead of steel.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Composites for Construction
Volume 27 • Issue 4 • August 2023
Copyright
© 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jul 10, 2022
Accepted: Feb 13, 2023
Published online: Apr 18, 2023
Published in print: Aug 1, 2023
Discussion open until: Sep 18, 2023
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Beams
- Climate change
- Climates
- Concrete
- Concrete beams
- Construction materials
- Engineering materials (by type)
- Environmental engineering
- Fiber reinforced concrete
- Global warming
- Material mechanics
- Material properties
- Materials engineering
- Metals (material)
- Reinforced concrete
- Reinforcing steel
- Steel
- Structural engineering
- Structural members
- Structural systems
- Trusses
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