BEHAVIOR OF PRESTRESSED HOLLOW CORE SLABS WITH OPENINGS STRENGTHENED WITH NEAR SURFACE MOUNTED FRP STRIPS

Abstract

In general, the ACI guidelines provided relatively conservative values for the ultimate capacity of the studied PHCSs with various trends. Regarding the specimens of series I, the underestimation in the ultimate capacity ranged between 16% and 33 % in comparison to the FEMs ones for the unstrengthened specimens and between 5% and 26% for the strengthened PHCSs. For the series II specimens, the ACI accurately predicted the ultimate load of the strengthened specimens to a large extent with a maximum variation of 4%, while a deviation reaching 30% was observed for the unstrengthened specimens. Finally, from the ACI results calculated for the deeper PHCSs analyzed in series III, it is clear that the ACI capacities for the unstrengthened specimens were in considerable larger variations compared to the results of the FEMs with an underestimation reaching 49%. On the contrary, a maximum of 23% was monitored for the strengthened specimens. Therefore, a modification to the ACI equations becomes crucial or non-linear FE analysis has to be incorporated to attain more accurate results.