TECHNICAL NOTES

Deflection Prediction for FRP-Strengthened Concrete Beams

Hemdan Said1

Abstract: Due to increasing popularity of using fiber-reinforced polymer 共FRP兲 for external strengthening of concrete structures, an
urgent demand for understanding the structural behavior of FRP-strengthened structures has been emerging. Unlike conventional rein-
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forced concrete 共RC兲 structures, FRP-strengthened members can exhibit additional flexural capacity in the postyielding stage. This makes
RC models for predicting deflection inapplicable in case of FRP-strengthened structures. Therefore, some models have been explicitly
developed for evaluating deflection of the strengthened structures. However, most existing models are empirically based, verified with
limited experimental results, and require in some cases sophisticated calculation procedures. Accordingly, there is still a demand for a
rational and more convenient model for predicting deflection of FRP-strengthened beams. In the current paper, Bischoff’s model,
originally proposed for RC and FRP reinforced structures, was extended. Consequently, the developed model is applicable to FRP-
strengthened concrete beams besides its validity to both RC and FRP reinforced beams. Validation of the model with some available test
data confirmed its accuracy.
DOI: 10.1061/共ASCE兲CC.1943-5614.0000069
CE Database subject headings: Fiber reinforced polymer; Stiffness; Deflection; Yield; Stiffening; Concrete beams; Predictions.
Author keywords: Fiber-reinforced polymer; Stiffness; Deflection; Yield; Stiffening.

Introduction Ie = 共M cr/M a兲mIg + 关1 − 共M cr/M a兲m兴Icr ⱕ Ig 共1兲

The use of fiber-reinforced polymer 共FRP兲 plates/sheets for flex-
ural strengthening of beams has proven to be effective in enhanc-
ing both strength and stiffness. The effectiveness of the FRP
composites as strengthening materials is attributed to many ad-
vantages such as high efficiency, low weight/strength ratio, high
resistance to corrosion, and ease of application. Before applying
the FRP bonding technique in practice, the strength and stiffness
of the strengthened member must be reliably codified. To date, an
extensive volume of research has focused upon the evaluation of
the flexural capacity of FRP-strengthened structures taking into
account the premature failure due to debonding 共e.g., Teng et al.
2003; Wu and Niu 2007; Rosenboom and Rizkalla 2008; Said and
Wu 2008a兲. However, researches concerned with stiffness and
deflection prediction are rare 共e.g., El-Mihilmy and Tedesco 2000;
Charkas et al. 2002兲.
Immediate or short-term deflection can be calculated by using
an average effective moment of inertia Ie in conjunction with
elastic deflection formulas or by integration of curvature along the
length of the beam 共Bischoff 2005兲. So far, Branson 共1965兲 pro-
posed the empirical relationship given by Eq. 共1兲 for predicting
the average effective moment of inertia Ie in conventional rein-
forced concrete 共RC兲 beams
1
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Qena Faculty of En-
gineering, South Valley Univ., P.O. Box 83521, Qena, Egypt. E-mail:
okasha73@yahoo.com
Note. This manuscript was submitted on January 2, 2009; approved
on August 24, 2009; published online on September 1, 2009. Discussion
period open until September 1, 2010; separate discussions must be sub-
mitted for individual papers. This technical note is part of the Journal of
Composites for Construction, Vol. 14, No. 2, April 1, 2010. ©ASCE,
ISSN 1090-0268/2010/2-244–248/$25.00.
According to this equation, Ie is gradually degraded from Ig to Icr
dependent on the ratio M cr / M a. Both the ACI building code, ACI
318-02 关American Concrete Institute 共ACI兲 2002兴, and the Cana-
dian Concrete Design Standard, CSA A23.3-04 共CSA 2004兲,
adopted Eq. 共1兲 considering the power m equals to 3.
It has been observed that Branson’s equation does not predict
deflection well for both RC beams having low reinforcement ra-
tios and FRP RC beams. The tension stiffening in these cases is
overestimated and hence the predicted deflections are underesti-
mated. Accordingly many investigators proposed different modi-
fications to Branson’s equation for better correlation with the
experimental results 关e.g., Dolan 1989; Gao et al. 1998; Toutanji
and Saafi 2000; American Concrete Institute 共ACI兲 2003兴. Alter-
natively, Bischoff 共2005兲 proposed the following equation for ra-
tionally predicting Ie for both RC beams and FRP RC beams:
Ie = Icr/关1 − 共1 − I cr/Iunc兲共M cr/M a兲2兴 共2兲
Bischoff’s equation more accurately models the instantaneous
tension stiffening phenomenon than the Branson equation used in
ACI 318-02 共2002兲 and CSA A23.3-04 共2004兲 and serious con-
sideration should be given to adopting it in the next editions of
these standards 共Gilbert 2006兲. However, it is evident that Bis-
choff’s equation does not address postyielding behavior since it
was developed for both conventional RC beams and FRP RC
beams where no yield plateau exists.
To date, few models for predicting the postyielding deflection
of FRP-strengthened concrete beams were developed 共El-
Mihilmy and Tedesco 2000; Charkas et al. 2002兲. El-Mihilmy and
Tedesco 共2000兲 assumed that the typical load-deflection curve for
a FRP-strengthened RC beam can be separated into three distinct
piecewise linear stages. They modeled the effective moment of
inertia in the cracking stage based on the statistical analysis of

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J. Compos. Constr. 2010.14:244-248.

 Moment , M extended over the entire beam span for convenience. 共The super-
scripts II and III in this paper refer to Stage II and Stage III,
III respectively.兲
M aIII

My ∆φ max
III
β III ∆φ max
III Stage I „Ma ⬍ Mcr…. This stage is characterized with its elastic
M y, f behavior since no cracks initiated in concrete yet. Accordingly,
β II ∆φ max
II II
E c I cr the effective moment of inertia may be considered equivalent to
M aII 1 the moment of inertia of the transformed uncracked section
E c I cr , sh

∆φ 共4兲
II

M cr
max 1 Ie = Iunc
I
E c I unc
1 Stage II „Mcr ⱕ Ma ⱕ My…. In this stage, cracks initiate and
propagate in concrete; thus the behavior is no longer elastic. The
φ aII φbII φy φ aIII φbIII Curvature, φ
effective moment of inertia is degraded but it is still higher than
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the fully cracked value due to tension stiffening effect. As shown

Fig. 1. Movement-curvature response of a FRP-strengthened con-
in Fig. 1, tension stiffening effect has its maximum value at the
crete member
first cracking and decreases as the applied moment increases until
it almost vanishes at the general yield of beam. Consequently, Iunc
is considered as the upper bound of the effective moment of in-
experimental results assuming Ie to degrade at yielding to Icr. On ertia in this stage, while Icr is almost the lower bound.
the other hand, based on the assumption of a bilinear moment- According to Bischoff 共2005兲 the effective moment of inertia
curvature relation for FRP-strengthened beams, El-Mihilmy and in this stage is expressed as
Tedesco 共2000兲 modeled the curvature in the postcracking stage
by a linear interpolation between the curvature at first yield and IIIe = Icr/关1 − 共1 − I cr/Iunc兲共M cr/M IIa 兲2兴 共5兲
the curvature at ultimate. Having determined the curvature ␾ at a
given applied bending moment M a, Ie can be easily calculated as
Stage III „Ma ⬎ My…. This stage starts just beyond the general
Ie = M a/Ec␾ 共3兲 yield moment of the beam M y where the beam has been fully
cracked and hence the stiffening factor of Stage II 共␤II兲 which
Charkas et al. 共2002兲 adopted a different approach for deflection accounts for the effect of uncracked concrete between two adja-
prediction of FRP-strengthened concrete members. They devel- cent cracks has no meaning. It is worth mentioning that the gen-
oped an analytical procedure at any load stage assuming a trilin- eral yield moment of a beam M y differs to some extent from the
ear moment-curvature response. A closed form equation was first yield of the critical section M y,f . The latter is obtained when
presented for the case of four-point bending as well as uniform the strain in the tensile steel at the critical section attains the yield
loading. Alternatively and for convenience, Charkas et al. 共2002兲 strain, while the former is defined as the moment that causes a
proposed empirical equations for calculating the beam moment of significant change in the overall stiffness of the beam. Herein, the
inertia at any load level. Then the calculated moment of inertia relationship between both M y and M y,f will be deduced. At the
can be used in conjunction with elastic formulas for predicting first yield of a section, the moment of inertia at that section is
deflection. assumed to degrade to the fully cracked value Icr; thus the first
Both the models of El-Mihilmy and Tedesco and Charkas et al. yield bending moment is expressed as
are empirically based and verified with limited experimental re-
sults. Furthermore, these models require in some cases long cal- M y,f = ␾yEcIcr 共6兲
culation procedures. Accordingly, there is still a demand for a and curvature at yield is given as follows:
rational and simple model for evaluating deflection of FRP-
strengthened beams. In the current paper, the model of Bischoff ␾y = ␧y/共d − hn兲 共7兲
共2005兲 will be extended for predicting flexural stiffness and de- where hn is calculated from the transformed cracked section.
flection in the postyielding stage. Consequently, the developed Similarly, the general yield bending moment M y may be ex-
model is applicable to FRP-strengthened concrete beams besides pressed in terms of the effective moment of inertia Ie,y and the
its validity to both RC and FRP reinforced beams. The proposed curvature at yield ␾y by the following relationship:
model will be validated by some available test data.
M y = ␾yEcIe,y 共8兲
Combining Eqs. 共6兲 and 共7兲
Proposed Model
M y = M y,f Ie,y/Icr 共9兲
Fig. 1 shows the moment-curvature response of a FRP-
strengthened concrete member. The curve may be separated into Substituting from Eq. 共5兲 into Eq. 共9兲
three distinct stages: M y = M y,f /关1 − 共1 − Icr/Iunc兲共M cr/M y兲2兴 共10兲
• Stage I: precracking stage 共M a ⬍ M cr兲;
• Stage II: cracking stage 共M cr ⱕ M a ⱕ M y兲; and Solving Eq. 共10兲 yields

M y = 关M y,f + 冑M 2y,f + 4共1 − Icr/Iunc兲M cr

• Stage III: postyielding stage 共M a ⬎ M y兲. 2
兴/2 共11兲
It should be noted that the model does not consider the effect
of debonding propagation of FRP on the predicted deflections. To derive the relationship of the effective moment of inertia in the
Furthermore, the proposed model also neglects the cutoff distance postyielding stage, let us assume that the entire beam span has
of FRP sheet which means that FRP sheets are considered to be already yielded and hence concrete has been fully cracked. Also,

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J. Compos. Constr. 2010.14:244-248.

 P/2 Based on Eqs. 共4兲, 共5兲, and 共18兲, the following equation sum-
marizes the proposed model:

冦 冧
Yielded zone Iunc M a ⬍ M cr
Ie = Icr/关1 − 共1 − I cr/Iunc兲共M cr/M a兲2兴 M cr ⱕ M a ⱕ M y
Ly
Icr,sh/关1 − 共1 − I cr,sh/Ie,y兲␭兴 Ma ⬎ My
a
共19兲
L/ 2
Once Ie has been evaluated, the deflection can be easily calculated
Fig. 2. Propagation of the yield zone in a FRP-strengthened concrete by adopting an elastic formula. As an example for the case of
member four-point bending, using the notation shown in Fig. 2, the mid-
span deflection can be calculated as

␦ = 共P/2兲a共3L2 − 4a2兲/24EcIe 共20兲

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let us assume that steel can be idealized as a bilinear model taking

into account the strain hardening effect. It is worth mentioning
that considering the effect of strain hardening enhances the accu-
racy of the model, while neglecting it leads to conservative pre-
dictions. Accordingly, the effective moment of inertia of the fully
yielded beam may be considered equivalent to the cracked mo-
ment of inertia of the transformed section based on Es,sh 共Icr,sh兲.
Calculating Icr,sh is identical to calculating Icr which the only dif-
ference is to replace Es with Es,sh. If no specific information is
available, Es,sh = Es / 10 may be considered a reasonable approxi-
mation. It is evident that Icr,sh is the lower bound for Ie in the
postyielding stage, while the upper bound is Ie,y. The effective
moment of inertia Ie lies somewhere between Ie,y and Icr,sh.
By referring to Fig. 1, the derivation of Ie may proceed as
follows:
⌬␾III
max = M y /EcIcr,sh − M y /EcIe,y = M y 共1 − Icr,sh/Ie,y 兲/共EcIcr,sh兲
共12兲
a = ␾b − ␤ ⌬␾max = M a /共EcIcr,sh兲 − ␤ ⌬␾max
␾III III III III III III III
共13兲
Model Verification
The accuracy of the proposed model has been checked using sev-
eral sets of the documented experiments. Due to the limited
space, only the results of two experiments 共Wu and Kurokawa
2002; Said and Wu 2008b兲 are presented in this paper. Table 1
shows the data and the main results of the surveyed beams. The
predicted-to-experimental deflection ratios at both the ultimate
and service loads 共60% of the ultimate load兲 are listed in the table.
Figs. 3 and 4 present the two examples of the comparisons be-
tween the predicted and the experimental deflections. Statistical
results of the predictions ratios of the surveyed beams at both
service and ultimate loads are shown in Figs. 5 and 6, respec-
tively. It is evident from Table 1 and Figs. 3–6 that the proposed
model presents reasonable predictions at both service and ulti-
mate loads.

a = M a /共EcIcr,sh兲 − ␤ M y 共1 − Icr,sh/Ie,y 兲/共EcIcr,sh兲

␾III III III
共14兲 Conclusions
Since Stage III starts from the general yield of the beam and
In the current paper, based on Bischoff’s model, a new model for
extends theoretically to the full yielding, propagation of yielding
predicting flexural stiffness and deflection in the postyielding
will control the behavior in this stage. Therefore, it is rational to
stage was proposed. Thus, the developed model is applicable to
consider the tension stiffening factor ␤III to equal the ratio be-
FRP-strengthened concrete beams besides its validity to both RC
tween the unyielded length and the shear span of the beam 共see
and FRP reinforced beams. Some available test data were used to
Fig. 2 for clarification兲
verify the model through the comparison between experimental
␤III = 共a − Ly兲/a 共15兲 and predicted deflections. Test results have confirmed the accu-
racy of the model in addition to its simplicity and ease of appli-
␤III cation.

= 再 M y/M III
a

1 − 冑1 − M y/M III
a
for three-point or four-point bending
for uniform distributed loading
冎 Notation
共16兲
The following symbols are used in this technical note:
A f ⫽ cross-sectional area of FRP composites;
e = M a /共Ec␾a 兲
IIII 共17兲
III III
As ⫽ cross-sectional area of tensile steel
Combining Eqs. 共14兲, 共16兲, and 共17兲 leads to reinforcements;
As⬘ ⫽ cross-sectional area of compressive steel
Ie = Icr,sh/关1 − 共1 − I cr,sh/Ie,y兲␭兴 共18兲 reinforcements;
in which a ⫽ shear span of the beam;
b ⫽ width of the RC beam 共tension face兲;

冦 冧
共M y/M III
a 兲
2
for three-point or d ⫽ effective depth of the section or depth of
four-point bending tensile steel;
␭= d f ⫽ depth of FRP sheets/plates;
共M y/M III 冑
a 兲共1 − 1 − M y /M a 兲 for uniform distributed
III
Ec ⫽ modulus of elasticity of concrete;
loading E f ⫽ modulus of elasticity of FRP;

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J. Compos. Constr. 2010.14:244-248.

 Table 1. Geometric and Material Properties of the Surveyed Beams

Geometric Longitudinal External % %

data reinforcement reinforcement Concrete predicted-to- predicted-to-
experimental experimental
b d L a As As⬘ ␴y Es Af df Ef f c⬘ deflection at deflection at
Reference Beam 共mm兲 共mm兲 共mm兲 共mm兲 共mm2兲 共mm2兲 共MPa兲 共GPa兲 共mm兲 共mm兲 共GPa兲 共MPa兲 service loada ultimate load
Wu and RC 150 160 1,800 900 402.1 265.5 364 210 — — — — 109.1 103.4
Kurokawa CP1-a5 150 160 1,800 900 402.1 265.5 364 210 60.0 200.30 235 46.4 91.7 100.7
共2002兲 CP2-a5A 150 160 1,800 900 402.1 265.5 364 210 120.0 200.60 235 46.4 102.5 90.6
CP2-a5B 150 160 1,800 900 402.1 265.5 364 210 120.0 200.60 235 46.4 108.5 88.7
Said and RC700-3D6/2 150 170 1,800 700 84.8 222.4 368 203 — — — — 103.0 83.4
Wu RC700-2D12/2 150 170 1,800 700 222.4 222.4 428 203 — — — — 102.5 66.8
共2008b兲 B700-none/2 150 170 1,800 700 — 222.4 — 203 33.3 200.11 230 28.6 120.6 93.6
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B700-3D6/2 150 170 1,800 700 84.8 222.4 368 203 33.3 200.11 230 28.6 115.9 107.2
B700-2D12/2 150 170 1,800 700 222.4 222.4 428 203 33.3 200.11 230 28.6 103.8 88.1
B700-2D16/2 150 170 1,800 700 397 222.4 383 196 33.3 200.11 230 28.6 84.1 89.1
B900-2D12/2 150 170 2,200 900 222.4 222.4 428 203 33.3 200.11 230 28.6 115.9 107.2
B500-2D12/2 150 170 1,400 500 222.4 222.4 428 203 33.3 200.11 230 28.6 87.8 89.9

Maximum 共max兲 121 107

Minimum 共min兲 84 67
Range 36 40
Average 共avg兲 104 92
Standard deviation 共SD兲 11.4 11.4
Coefficient of variation 共COV兲 10.9% 12.3%
a
Service load is considered as 60% of the ultimate load.

140.0
Predicted-to-experim ental
m idspan deflection (% )

120.0
100.0
80.0
60.0
40.0 Max. Min. Range Avg. SD COV
20.0 121 84 36 104 11.4 10.9 %
0.0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12

Beam No.

Fig. 3. Predicted versus experimental midspan deflections of beam Fig. 5. Statistical results of the predictions ratios of the surveyed
“CP2-a5b” of Wu and Kurokawa experiment 共2002兲 beams at the service load 共60% of the ultimate load兲
Predicted-to-experim ental

140.0
m idspan deflection (% )

120.0
100.0
80.0
60.0
40.0 Max. Min. Range Avg. SD COV
20.0 107 67 40 92 11.4 12.3 %
0.0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12

Beam No.

Fig. 4. Predicted versus experimental midspan deflections of beam Fig. 6. Statistical results of the predictions ratios of the surveyed
“B700-2D12-2” of Said and Wu experiement 共2008b兲 beams at the ultimate load

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J. Compos. Constr. 2010.14:244-248.

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f ⬘c ⫽ concrete compressive strength; neering and Auburn Research Foundation, Auburn Univ., Part 1.
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unyielded section; ASCE, New York.
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Icr,sh ⫽ cracked transformed moment of inertia of
Rexdale, Toronto.
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Iunc ⫽ uncracked transformed moment of inertia; plates.” ACI Struct. J., 97共5兲, 679–688.
L ⫽ clear span of beam; Gao, D., Benmokrane, B., and Masmoudi, R. 共1998兲. “A calculating
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