Experimental Behavior of Continuous Hybrid Reinforced Concrete Spliced Girders

This paper conducts an experimental study on the behavior of two-spans continuous reinforced concrete spliced girders strengthened using steel fiber concrete of volume fraction of 1% at splice regions and side near surface mounted carbon fiber reinforced polymer bars of 6 and 10 mm sizes. Five beams with 150 × 250 mm rectangular cross section and 2200 mm total length were cast. The first beam was cast as one unit without joints as a reference while the rest were made from assemblage of three precast segments spliced together using cast in place concrete joints of 170 mm length located at the inflection points. All girders were tested using a single concentrated force at each midspan. The studied parameters were: existence of splices, using of steel fiber concrete at splice region, and strengthening of spliced girders using side near surface mounted carbon fiber reinforced polymer bars. The results showed that existence of splices led to a decrease in the ultimate capacity of the spliced girder of about 33.1% with larger midspan deflections in comparison with the non-spliced girder. But, strengthening of spliced girders using CFRP bars could provide additional load capacity from 69.1% to 98.1% compared with the non-strengthened spliced girder with lower midspan deflections while steel fiber concrete at joints raised the ultimate load of spliced girders by 12.3%. However, the failure mode of the spliced beams were brittle if compared with the ductile failure of the control girder.