Performance of reinforced concrete columns strengthened with carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) - case study of an abandoned school project

Abstract

This research presented a case study of an abandoned three-storey school building focusing on strengthening of Reinforced Concrete (RC) column with Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) jacketing. The constructed structural element of the building was assessed and evaluated by visual observation, destructive tests and non-destructive tests include carbonation tests, ferro scan tests, steel reinforcement verification, Ultrasonic Pulse Velocity (UPV), coring tests and rebound hammer tests. The modeling of the whole building was carried out using Orion 18, a structural analysis program based on the site test results in order to assess the structural integrity of the building. Based on the structural analysis conducted in Orion 18, a column at ground floor level was chosen to be strengthened with multilayer CFRP jacketing. This column has cross-section of 300mm x 300mm with 3600mm in height. Results were obtained through non-linear Finite Element simulation. The behavior of the column with and without CFRP jacketing was studied to observe its axial stress and strain behavior in ABAQUS Finite Element software. The result shows that increasing in number of CFRP layers has a significant effect on the behavior of such columns which was expected due to confinement effect.