A review on flexural behavior of reinforced concrete beams strengthened with prestressed carbon fiber reinforced polymer plates

Abstract

In recent years, with the rapid development of China’s economy, reinforced concrete structure as an economical and good mechanical properties material, is widely used in buildings. In bridge engineering, Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer materials is mostly used as externally bonded reinforcement for flexural strengthening of reinforced concrete (RC) beams. However, this method makes the strength of CFRP plates cannot be fully utilized, while the prestressed technology can significantly improve the efficiency of CFRP materials and the flexural strength of the RC beams. This paper compares different methods of prestressed CFRP plates strengthening RC beams and discuss the development of the technology. The results shows that RC beams strengthened with prestressed CFRP plates have better flexural performance. The cracking, yield and ultimate loads increase significantly compared with ordinary beams or non-prestressed strengthened beams. The effectiveness of strengthening process are related to many factors ranging from anchorage methods, prestress levels, ratio of corrosion to bond length. Future research suggestions are also given. At present, most of the experiments are operated in ordinary environment, which is different from the project in real life. More testing environment like chlorine corrosion must be considered. The trials about prestress loss during strengthening process are not enough. There also need more comparative trials in prestressed CFRP plates strengthening concerning prestress loss and non-prestressed CFRP plates.