Near surface mounting technology with glass fibre reinforced polymer and sisal rope fibre for flexural strengthening of reinforced concrete beams

Abstract

Using the near-surface mounted (NSM) technique, the purpose of this work is to investigate effectiveness of the flexural strengthening of the reinforced concrete (RC) beam. Extruded Glass Fibre Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) bars and sisal rope fibres are both being used as part of the research project in order to enhance the material. Following that, the purpose of this research is to evaluate the impact that embedment length has on the flexural behaviour of the beams. In order to accomplish this goal, the NSM reinforcements were either placed throughout the length of the beam or in the flexure zone (max bending moment area). In all, ten beams were put through the two-point load testing procedure. The results of the tests showed that beams strengthened with GFRP bars performed better than those that had been mended with sisal ropes. The GFRP strengthened beams showed increase of 28% in flexural capacity of the beam whereas the sisal rope strengthened beams showed 16% increase in the flexural capacity of the RC beam. In addition, beams that were retrofitted with NSM reinforcements over the whole length of the beam exhibited enhancement 8% in flexural capacities than beams that were just modified in the flexure zone (maximum bending moment region).