Abstract
Steel structures are generally subjected to damages and defects due to different causes such as corrosion, fracture cracking, fire, buckling…etc. Damaged or defected parts may include girders, columns, welds, splices, base plates…etc. There is a wide range of techniques used for repair and strengthening starting with using protective coatings and ending up with full replacement of the damaged parts. Fiber Reinforced Plastic (FRP) laminates are widely used now in the field of repair and strengthening of different types of structures (reinforced concrete structures, steel structures, masonry structures, timber structures….etc.). The main goal of this research is to investigate the effectiveness of using Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic (CFRP) laminates in repair and strengthening of steel beams (in both flexural and shear). A total of five box-section steel beams were tested in three point load flexure test to determine the stiffness and ultimate load carrying capacity of the strengthened and repaired beams using CFRP laminates and compare the obtained results for these beams with those of the fifth beam which used as a control beam (without CFRP laminates). Test results showed that the effectiveness of using CFRP laminates for repair and strengthening of steel beams depends mainly on the obtained modes of failure. Highest effectiveness was obtained in tension failure modes while almost no effectiveness obtained in compression failure modes.
Highlights
Traditional strengthening technique by using steel sections has a good achievement to increase strength and stiffness of steel structural elements
Flexural strengthening of steel elements using Fiber Reinforced Plastic (FRP) had investigated extensively in many previous studies [2,3,4,5,6]. Another group of studies has focused on strengthening of steel web by Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic (CFRP) which dramatically increases the web crippling capacity exclusively for those with large web slenderness ratio
Results of the finite element analysis showed that strengthening of steel beams with different flange width can result in the growth of shear capacity up to 66% for square shear zones and up to 36% for the rectangular shear zones
Summary
Traditional strengthening technique by using steel sections has a good achievement to increase strength and stiffness of steel structural elements. This technique has many disadvantages such as it is a labor and cost intensive coupled with the needed onsite welding and drilling operations; it is considered a time consuming technique and can causes a traffic disruption in highway roads and bridges. Flexural strengthening of steel elements using FRP had investigated extensively in many previous studies [2,3,4,5,6] Another group of studies has focused on strengthening of steel web by CFRP which dramatically increases the web crippling capacity exclusively for those with large web slenderness ratio. Test results proved that there was an increase in the web-buckling capacity especially by bonding CFRP laminates on both sides of the web [7,8,9,10]
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