Reinforced concrete is perhaps the most widely used building material in the world. However, the materials used for reinforcement of concrete i.e. steel is quite expensive and scarcely available in the developing world. As a result, bamboo is considered to be a cheaper replacement with high tensile strength. This research investigated the structural behaviour of bamboo-reinforced concrete slabs used for footplate foundation subjected to concentrated load. For this purpose, four different reinforced concrete slab panels were developed and analyzed. The influence of replacing steel with bamboo for the reinforcement of concrete slabs on their structural behaviour was assessed by determining the load-deflection characteristics, the ultimate load, the stiffness, the ductility, the cracking pattern, and the energy absorption capacity. The results showed that in comparison to steel reinforced concrete slabs, the strength of 82% can be acquired by the bamboo reinforced slabs. Furthermore, ductility demonstrated by the two types of specimens was almost equivalent i.e. up to 93%. Those indicated that the structural behaviour demonstrated by bamboo reinforced slabs is quite comparable to that of steel reinforced concrete slabs. Therefore, bamboo can prove to be a promising substitute for steel in concrete reinforcement. Future studies may further examine this opportunity.

The old existing reinforced concrete (RC) structures in Taiwan are susceptible to severe damage under earthquakes because of the soft-story mechanism. Moreover, the effects of near-fault ground motions often contain a long period of velocity pulse and permanent ground displacement. This study is based on the tri-axial shaking table test conducted at the National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering in Taiwan and a series of seismic performance evaluations of a non-ductile RC structure in Taiwan. Finite element analysis (FEA) will be conducted to simulate the linear and nonlinear behavior of the seven-story building. This accommodates the damage plasticity model for concrete and the elastic-perfectly plastic model for reinforcement. Comparison of the results between the experimental test and numerical model showed that the similarity of the vibration period has a great influence on the simulation results. The findings showed that the data of acceleration and displacement behavior corresponded with the experimental results in a satisfactory margin. Also, the damage mode is very similar to the shaking table test results. The study found that using FEA can satisfactorily simulate the seismic performance of mid-rise buildings under a near-fault earthquake.

This study investigated a strengthening strategy for reinforced concrete (RC) T-beams in the negative-moment region using polymer cement mortar (PCM) systems. Monotonic loading tests were conducted on beams retrofitted with PCM, incorporating steel reinforcements of either 13 mm or 16 mm in diameter. The flexural performance of the strengthened specimens was assessed under three-point bending, with a focus on load–deflection behavior, crack patterns, and failure modes. Key structural parameters governing the structural response were analyzed. The findings indicated that incorporating PCM markedly improved the flexural capacity of RC T-beams, with increases in the ultimate load of 55% and 99% for the two reinforcement configurations. Although the beam strengthened with 16 mm steel bars exhibited reduced ductility, its energy absorption was 29% higher compared to its 13 mm counterpart. A three-dimensional nonlinear finite element model was also developed in ABAQUS 6.14, and its predictions closely matched the experimental observations.

The utilization of near-surface mounted Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) reinforcement as a method of strengthening in reinforced concrete structures has increased considerably in recent years. Moreover, the application of double-shear lap tests for this reinforcement method leads to the achievement of a local bond-slip behavior in a bonded joint. This research, therefore, focused on 3-D modeling of this type of test to suitably characterize the bond mechanics between FRP rods and concrete at various embedment depth. The use of different alternatives to represent the interface between the FRP rod and concrete were analyzed after which a comparison was drawn between the numerical finite element (FE) simulations and experimental measurements. The results showed the prediction of the load-slip corresponded with the data obtained from the experiment. Finally, the proposed model has the ability to express the relationship between the penalty stiffness parameters in shear direction K-ss = (k(tt)) and the embedment depth of FRP rods.

In this day and age, a rewarding and new structural strengthening technique for civil structures is steel wire rope (SWR) strengthening. The ideal technique for structural analysis is the finite element method. Nonetheless, it could be an expensive and a challenging task to develop a model through the finite element method for a simple problem, for instance, cross section analysis of reinforced concrete (RC) structures. Therefore, in order to predict the flexural behavior of T-section RC beams, strengthened in the negative moment region with bonded steel wire ropes, researchers performed an analytical validation through a program based on the modified compression field theory (MCFT), namely Response-2000. They chose experimental data from the test conducted on three T-section RC beams in 2012. Subsequently, the collected results were compared with calculations from the fiber-elements method, constructed in excel spread sheets. Reasonably precise calculations of load-deflection responses, up to the peak load, were offered by the developed analytical model, however, the ductility of the beams was underestimated. The validated model was then utilized to study the impact of SWR diameter on the behavior of strengthened beams. This analytical investigation reveals the effectiveness of SWR bonded systems as an alternative strengthening technique, with the aim of enhancing the flexural capacity of RC beams.