Flexural behaviour of RC beams strengthened with prestressed steel wire ropes polymer mortar composite

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper presents an experimental study on the flexural behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) beams strengthened with prestressed steel wire ropes-polymer mortar composite (PSWR-PM). The effects of reinforcement ratio of steel wire ropes, strengthening procedures, and unbonded length of the steel wire rope-to-polymer mortar interface were studied with large-scale bending tests on RC beams strengthened by PSWR-PM. The test results showed that the proposed strengthening technique could substantially increase the load carrying capacity of the RC beams. Both strengthening procedures were effective in enhancing the flexural behaviour of the RC beams, and strengthening procedure II could even restrain the debonding failure. The unbonded length of the steel wire rope-to-polymer mortar interface had a minor impact on the ultimate capacity when the anchoring length of the steel wire rope in the polymer mortar was sufficient. Moreover, a theoretical model was proposed to predict the flexural strength of RC beams strengthened with the PSWR-PM technique and the predictions showed good agreement with the experimental results.