Analytical theory of flexural behavior of concrete beam reinforced with textile-combined steel

Textile-reinforced concrete (TRC) is a new high performance cementitious composite material, which not only has superior corrosion resistance but also can effectively limit the development of concrete cracks and make the crack width and spacing of concrete become smaller. However, due to the brittle feature of fiber materials, the TRC structural member has no distinct failure symptom when it arrives at its ultimate load. At the same time, ordinary reinforced concrete (RC) elements have large dead weight and can not efficiently restrict the expansion of the main crack of structures because of the restriction of their special cover thickness. In order to overcome the disadvantages of both the TRC and the RC, a new architecture reinforced with textile- combined steel is proposed in this study, making full use of the advantages of the above two structures. The cover concrete at the tension zone of an RC element is partially replaced with TRC and thus the steel reinforcements replaced with textiles are subtracted. Compared with the old one, the new structure has less dead weight and has the merits of service safety and good durability. The flexural development process of the proper beam with this new structure is investigated in this paper and based on the plane section assumption, analytical equations are derived by using nonlinear analysis theory, including the load-carrying capacity at different stages and moment-curvature relationship and mid-span deflection during the entire loading process. Comparison between the calculated and the experimental results reveals satisfactory agreement and thus verifies the feasibility of the equations.