Abstract
This paper investigates the effectiveness of fabric reinforced cementitious matrix (FRCM) systems in shear-strengthening of reinforced concrete beams. Three types of FRCM systems were considered, namely, polyparaphenylene benzobisoxazole (PBO)-FRCM, Carbon-FRCM, and Glass-FRCM. At first, tensile characterization test was performed on 15 FRCM coupons with the aim of identifying the tensile properties of the FRCM systems adopted. After that, seven shear-critical RC beams were tested under three-point loading, with the consideration of two test parameters: (a) FRCM material (glass/carbon/PBO); and (b) strengthening configuration (full/intermittent). The study results revealed the use of FRCM as a strengthening material to achieve a considerable improvement in the structural capacity of shear-critical RC beams. The average gain in the shear capacity of the FRCM-strengthened beams was 57%. The beam specimens strengthened with carbon-FRCM showed the highest improvement as compared to those strengthened with glass-and PBO-FRCM systems. As intuitively expected, the shear capacity improvement achieved with the full-length strengthening systems was generally higher than that with the intermittent counterparts.
Highlights
Structural damage is normally encountered in reinforced concrete (RC) structures subject to harsh environment or unexpected extra loads [1]
The stress–strain diagram for a fabric reinforced cementitous matrix (FRCM) system is composed of two characteristic phases: (i) the prior-cracking stiff section phase represented by a steep curve; followed by (ii) a reduced
This paper has investigated the effectiveness of FRCM systems in shear-strengthening of reinforced concrete beams
Summary
Structural damage is normally encountered in reinforced concrete (RC) structures subject to harsh environment or unexpected extra loads [1]. FRCM systems have been successfully applied in the previous research for strengthening RC members such as slabs [11], columns [12,13,14], and beams critical in flexure [15,16] or in shear [17,18,19,20]. In these studies, a noticeable improvement was generally reported in the loading capacity of the FRCM-strengthened members as compared to that of the non-strengthened benchmarks. It is well-agreed that a proper understanding of the tensile characteristics of the FRCM composite is required to complete the structural design or numerical modeling of the FRCM strengthening system [21,22,23]
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