Abstract
This paper aims to develop a new method for shear reinforcing concrete beams by using the ultrahigh performance PBO fiber mesh as a replacement for conventional stirrups inside a concrete structural member. The elementary test was performed first to investigate the general behavior of the internal reinforcing PBO fiber mesh as a fundamental objective of this study. Then, nine RC beams with and without internal PBO fiber mesh were conducted in the RC beam test. The parameters in the RC beam test were the number of internal PBO mesh layers, the width of internal PBO mesh in the shear span, and the reinforcing configuration of the internal PBO mesh. The experimental results showed that the shear capacity and the shear carried by internal PBO fiber mesh increased significantly with a higher number of the internal mesh layers; however, the shear capacity decreased when the width of internal mesh in the shear span was expanded. Besides, the difference in reinforcing configuration of the internal PBO mesh showed a great impact on the shear capacity of concrete beams reinforced with internal PBO fiber mesh. Furthermore, an empirical method for evaluating shear carried by internal PBO fiber mesh was modeled and a moderate agreement between values from the model and values from the experiment was obtained.
