Experimental study on reinforced high-strength concrete short columns confined with AFRP sheets

This paper is aiming to study the performances of reinforced high-strength concrete (HSC) short columns confined with aramid fibre-reinforced polymer (AFRP) sheets. An experimental program, which involved 45 confined columns and nine unconfined columns, was carried out in this study. All the columns were circular in cross section and tested under axial compressive load. The considered parameters included the concrete strength, amount of AFRP layers, and ratio of hoop reinforcements. Based on the experimental results, a prediction model for the axial stress-strain curves of the confined columns was proposed. It was observed from the experiment that there was a great increment in the compressive strength of the columns when the amount of AFRP layers increases, similar as the ultimate strain. However, these increments were reduced as the concrete strength increasing. Comparisons with other existing prediction models present that the proposed model can provide more accurate predictions.