Abstract
Corrosion of steel members and an increase in the traffic loads make the retrofit necessary for steel bridge beams. To strengthen composite steel bridge beams, either the existing damaged members are reinforced or they are replaced with the new ones. Both process demand a bridge to be closed to traffic for a long time. In emergency cases such as earthquakes, it is crucial to maintain traffic flow for delivering the urgent needs. The bridge can shortly be opened to traffic after the damaged beams are rapidly strengthened by means of composite member reinforcements. In addition, it is possible to quickly strengthen a steel member, which underwent a reduction in cross-sectional area due to corrosion resulting from ambient conditions by applying composite material to its tension flange. In this study, steel beams with I-cross section are reinforced using High Modulus Carbon Reinforced Polymer shortly named HM-CFRP. Also in this study, the effect of using steel clamps on the strengthening method is investigated. The clamps are used to avoid the slip of HM-CFRP material from epoxy. Different brands of epoxy are tested in order to determine which type of epoxy is to be used. Made up I-cross section beam having a similar bending behavior were tested in place of reinforced concrete composite steel beams and the reinforcement methods are subsequently applied on the made up I-cross section steel beams.
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