Examination of influential factors on shear strength of externally bonded FRP reinforcement in RC beams

Abstract

The fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) retrofitting technique has been increasingly created to enhance the capacity of the existing concrete members. In this study, the shear contribution of the external FRP strengthening system in the reinforced concrete (RC) beams is estimated by the semi-empirical models available in the open literatures and guidelines. Number of beams monitored in the previous studies are first considered to assess the reliability of the models. Afterwards, the investigation of influential factors such as the beam configurations, the strengthening characteristics and the material properties are implemented. With high accuracy and low coefficient of variation, the model proposed in a previous study of the authors gains the mostly considerable estimation for the shear resisting strength of FRP strengthening system compared to the accessible data base from the experiments. In addition, the critical properties of the materials associating with the retrofitting systems for the strengthened beams are investigated to obtain the acquired shear performance.

Keywords

• strengthening
• reinforced concrete
• frp
• shear strength