This paper reports the behavior of I-shaped fiber reinforced concrete (FRC) beams flexurally reinforced with prestressed steel and glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) bars. The use of steel fibers aims to enhance the durability of pre-fabricated concrete structures by partially or completely replacing steel stirrups. In addition, GFRP and steel bars/tendons are combined as flexural reinforcement, creating a hybrid reinforcement system. GFRP bars are immune to corrosion and are positioned with minimum concrete cover, while steel reinforcement has adequate concrete cover thickness to minimize its risk to corrosion and ensure the required flexural capacity in a fire occurrence. Nonlinear finite element analysis (NLFEA) software was utilized for a critical analysis
on the use of smeared crack model for predicting the behavior of this type of beams, including deflection, crack pattern, load-carrying capacity, and failure modes.The first author gratefully acknowledges the financial support of “Fundação para a Ciênciae Tecnologia” (FCT-Portugal), through the PhD grant SFRH/BD/09253/2020. The authors acknowledge the support provided by FCT
through the project FemWebAI, reference PTDC/ECI-EST/6300/2020, and PID2021-125553NB-I00 (MCI/AEI/FEDER, UE). This work was partly financed by FCT / MCTES through national funds (PIDDAC) under the R&D Unit Institute for Sustainability and Innovation in Structural Engineering (ISISE), under reference UIDB/04029/2020, and under the Associate Laboratory Advanced Production and Intelligent Systems ARISE
under reference LA/P/0112/2020
