Experimental and numerical investigation of debonding process of the FRP plate-concrete interface

Abstract

Single shear tests performed to study the debonding between the concrete and the FRP plate of 2 mm thickness are presented. Specimens with five different bond lengths have been tested. In order to investigate the debonding mechanism and measure the complete strain distribution, digital image correlation (DIC) method was applied. The shear stress and slip distribution curves were calculated from the strain distribution functions fitted from measured strain data. Based on the features of the shear stress transfer zone under different load levels, the whole loading process has been divided into four stages: (1) elastic stage; (2) cracking stage; (3) debonding stage; (4) failure stage. According to the relationship between the relative bearing capacity and bond length, a concept of efficient bond length was suggested. A bi-linear bond stress-slip model was calibrated by the constitutive parameters of the experimental shear stress-slip curves. Based on the bi-linear bond stress-slip relationship, a numerical model of FRP plate-concrete interface was built using the bonded-particle model (BPM) and the debonding process was numerically analyzed. The numerical results present good agreement with the experimental results in the load-slip response and the shear stress distribution along the bond length. The comparison between the experimental and the numerical results shows that BPM can effectively simulate the debonding process of the FRP plate-concrete interface.