A case study of flexural performance of reinforced concrete beams bonded with steel plates with different thickness

This study investigates the flexural behavior of four reinforced concrete beams. The beams were composed by adding steel plates which have different thickness (2, 3, and 5 mm) in the tension zone to invention out the consequence of the altered plate thicknesses on the flexural behavior on these beams, and the consequence of using typical concrete. The first beam is made of normal concrete (non composite beam) additionally, the other beams are prepared using usual concrete (composite beams by plates). The connection between the concrete and steel plate was by using shear connector, to gain the effective connection between the concrete and steel plate. The study consists of two parts: the first part is an experimental work through casting and testing beams, while in the second part, an analysis has been conducted to the tested specimens by using a three dimensional nonlinear finite element method by ANSYS program (Version 18.1). The increase of ultimate strength for plated beam compared with unplated beam (73%, 86% and 161%) with increase the thickness steel plate (2, 3 and 5) respectively. concrete strain, crack width and numbers of cracks decrease with increasing the thickness of steel plate.