Abstract
Epoxy bonded steel plates (externally bonded reinforcemen: EBR) for the strengthening of concrete structures were introduced to the construction industry in the late 1960s, and the use of fibre reinforced polymers (FRPs) was introduced in the 1990s, which means that these techniques have already been used in construction for 50 and 25 years, respectively. In the first part of the paper, a historical survey of the development and introduction of these strengthening techniques into the construction industry are presented. The monitoring of such applications in construction is very important and gives more confidence to this strengthening technique. Therefore, in the second part of the paper, two long-term monitoring campaigns over an extraordinarily long duration will be presented. Firstly, a 47-year monitoring campaign on a concrete beam with an epoxy bonded steel plate and, secondly, a 20-year monitoring campaign on a road bridge with epoxy bonded CFRP (carbon fibre reinforced polymers) strips are described. The paper is an expanded version of the paper presented at the SMAR2017 Conference.
Highlights
Prefabricated reinforced concrete (RC) elements of the roof of an industrial building (Figure 11)had to be strengthened in 1970
Empa researchers developed the idea of using Carbon fibre reinforced polymers (CFRP) instead of steel in the 1980s
Many investigations on the durability and long-term behaviour of unstressed and prestressed externally bonded reinforcements are available in the literature
Summary
1960s by L’Hermite et al [1] and Bresson [2]. A figure taken from [1] is given in Figure 1 showing the principle idea of applying a steel plate to a concrete beam with an adhesive (tole d’acier: steel plate and colle: adhesive). Dussek [5] described results of tests on plate-reinforced beams, discussed a design method and presented strengthening projects where steel plates were applied on several bridges in UK. For a building in Zurich, Switzerland, which was strengthened by steel plates in April 1973, a a large-scale test up to failure was performed [6,7]. One of the first bridges that was strengthened with epoxy bonded steel are presented in Agthe [9]. One of the first bridges that was strengthened with epoxy bonded steel plates was the Gizenenbridge in Switzerland [9,10] in the year 1980.
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