Confinement properties of circular concrete columns wrapped with prefabricated textile-reinforced fine concrete shells

This paper proposes an innovative column composed of a core column (including both reinforced concrete (RC) and plain concrete (PC) columns) and a prefabricated textile-reinforced fine concrete (TRC) shell. To study the confinement properties of TRC shells on this novel type of concrete column, 20 circular specimens, including 12 PC columns and 8 RC columns, were prepared for axial compressive tests. Four key parameters, including the column size, reinforcing ratio of the carbon textile, concrete strength, and stirrup spacing, were evaluated. The results indicated that the compressive properties of the columns were improved by increasing the reinforcing ratio of the textile layers. In the case of TRC-confined PC columns, the maximum improvement in the peak load was 56.3%, and for TRC-confined RC columns, the maximum improvement was 60.2%. Based on the test results, an analytical model that can be used to calculate the stress–strain curves of prefabricated TRC shell-confined concrete columns has been proposed. The calculated curves predicted by the proposed model agreed well with the test results.