Flexural behavior of aluminum I beams strengthened by pre stressed CFRP tendons
Abstract To improve the flexural rigidity and load carrying capacity, aluminum I beams were retrofitted by pre stressed carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) tendons. Three pre stress schemes were proposed. Four point bending experiments were carried out to reveal the flexural behaviors and failure styles of the strengthened beams. Flexure of the pre stressed beam is greatly reduced due to arch effect and increased flexural rigidity. Increasing the pre stress level, the flexure gets even smaller. Yield load of the pre stressed beam is enhanced at a level of 33.3% CFRP pre stressing schemes greatly improve the failure load of the aluminum I beam, which fails at plastic lateral torsional buckling. The improvement is about 52.3% in this research.