Strengthening of an existing reinforced concrete structure
Conclusion and Recommendations:
There were several points must be discussed before reaching to the final conclusion of our project. These points are as follows:
It is very important to mention in this part that our project (Strengthening using FRP) plays an active role in the environmental point of view. This role could be concluded in the construction wastes (physical pollution) that usually produced especially in concrete jacketing (wood, extra concrete, etc…). In addition to that, there were a lot of noise (noise pollution) due to vibration of concrete, steel works, form works, bolts fixing (in case of steel plates), etc….
On the other hand, FRP are mainly made from wasted material (in our project we have carbon fiber polymers). This means that producing FRP materials will take part (even small) in reducing our modern life wastes.
Once our country has grown very fast and almost most of the required building has been build from more than 10 years, most of these buildings need some structural maintenance because of the effect of the environment on these buildings, changing the function of the building (changing the building from residential building to the commercial buildings), mistakes in design or construction stages, etc….
With the development of strengthening methods, FRP has shown a very good results from theoretical, practical and experimental point of views and it solved a lot of very critical structural problems safely and successfully. Briefly, it could be said that our project is very important and it came to make sure that FRP strengthening method could be applied in most of the critical structural problems and there were approximately no limits to use this method when comparing with other available strengthening methods.
Needless to say that FRP saves a lot of money when it saves a building from re-designing and re-building from the beginning with very small direct cost. In addition to that, it saves indirect cost which is the time because (as mentioned before) FRP takes no time of application (very few days) with comparing wit the other available strengthening methods.
After these good theoretical and practical structural results, it could be said that FRP strengthening method could be a good business in the UAE and the other gulf countries that provide several job positions for the Civil Engineers.
The main objective of our project is to strength an existing structural building using Fiber Reinforced Polymers. In fact, this project helped us in learning the most modern technology in the structural field in civil engineering. In addition to that, learning new computer software program (Prokon Structural Analysis) was very useful in performing the structural analysis and design. It is very important to mention that this project gave us the chance to apply our knowledge that we gained from structural analysis and design courses to be applied.