Shear Strengthening Behavior of Reinforced Concrete Beams with Varying Blot Spacing and Wire Mesh Presence in Geopolymer Mortar Panels

This study aims to analyzes the shear behavior, crack patterns, and failure modes of reinforced concrete beams strengthened with geopolymer mortar panels (GMP) which consisted PVA fibers and wire mesh with varying bolts spacing. Shear behavior is discussed based on load-deflection behavior, maximum load, steel load strain, and concrete load strain. The research stages were divided into two, namely compressive strength of geopolymer mortar and shear test of reinforced concrete beams. The geopolymer mortar compressive strength test used 50x50x50 mm cube samples, tested at 3, 7, and 28 days. The geopolymer mortar was produced from fly ash as the base material and activators, such as sodium hydroxide and sodium silicate. Meanwhile, the beam shear test have cross section of 150x300 mm with a length of 2300 mm. There were four variation, namely CB, GM-W-200, GM-W-300, and GM-NW-200 beams. The results showed that adding reinforcement panels with geopolymer mortar material which consisted PVA fibers and wire mesh with distance of 200 mm (GM-W-200) affected the behavior of reinforced concrete beams to become more ductile and no longer occur shear collapse. Meanwhile, GM-W-300 and GM-NW-200 beams have not improved the bending behavior of the beams, and shear failure still occur as in CB beams.