Flexural behaviour of fibre reinforced geopolymer concrete composite beams

An experimental investigation on the behaviour of geopolymer composite concrete beams reinforced with conventional steel bars and various types of fibres namely steel, polypropylene and glass in different volume fractions under flexural loading is presented in this paper. The cross sectional dimensions and the span of the beams were same for all the beams. The first crack load, ultimate load and the load-deflection response at various stages of loading were evaluated experimentally. The details of the finite element analysis using "ANSYS 10.0" program to predict the load-deflection behavior of geopolymer composite reinforced concrete beams on significant stages of loading are also presented. Nonlinear finite element analysis has been performed and a comparison between the results obtained from finite element analysis (FEA) and experiments were made. Analytical results obtained using ANSYS were also compared with the calculations based on theory and presented.