Significant Material and Global Warming Potential Savings through Truss-Based Topology Optimization of Textile-Reinforced Concrete Beams

This work focused on material and Global Warming Potential (GWP) savings for the construction of textile-reinforced concrete (TRC) beams made of carbon fabrics (without steel rebars), which were characterized by their flexural behavior. Two beam design approaches were explored for material and GWP savings: (1) regular TRC beam designs, in which the steel rebars were replaced by a carbon textile, which eliminated the need for a thick concrete protective layer that is required in steel reinforcement; and (2) optimized truss-like TRC beams that were based on topology optimization, which distributed the concrete and fabric at their optimal locations. The aim was to minimize concrete consumption through the development of lightweight structural concrete elements with irregular shapes. This exploited the ability of the fabrics to conform to complex shapes and their corrosion resistance. Examples of concrete beams with optimal configurations that were demonstrated in this work showed the potential for significant savings in concrete and reinforcement and the related GWP. In addition, weight was significantly reduced when the textile was used as reinforcement instead of steel.