Ductile Compressive Failure of Concrete Reinforced with High Strength Carbon Hybrid Composite

For centuries, steel rebar has been the primary reinforcement in concrete despite its major drawbacks, such as its heavy weight, high electrical conductivity, and corrosiveness. Thus, in response to the need for better alternatives, innovative Hybrid Composite (HC) reinforcements have been developed.

The focus of this paper is to investigate the performance of tubular HC reinforcements in concrete columns under axial compressive loading.

Concrete columns of different sizes were tested.

For the small columns, HC reinforced columns showed very high load capacity, which was more than 3 times the capacity of plain concrete. Moreover, significant ductility was achieved with an ultimate strain of up to 59%. For the large columns, HC reinforced columns showed similar load capacities, but much larger ultimate strains in comparison to the corresponding steel reinforced concrete columns.