Response of Damaged Reinforced Concrete Beams Strengthened with NSM CFRP Strips

Abstract

This paper presents a study (experimentally) for strengthening reinforced concrete (RC) beams with Near-Surface-Mounted (NSM) technique. The use of this technique with CFRP strips or rebars is an efficient technology for increasing the strength for flexure and shear or for repairing damaged reinforced concrete (RC) members. The objective of this research is to study, experimentally, RC beams either repaired or strengthened with NSM CFRP strips and follow their flexural behavior and failure modes. NSM-CFRP strips were used to strengthen three RC beam specimens, one of them was initially strengthened and tested up to failure. Four beam specimens have been initially subjected to preloading to 50% and 80% of ultimate load. Two of the specimens were either repaired or strengthened with NSM-CFRP strips. All the repaired/strengthened pre-damaged beams have been tested up to failure by using compression-testing machine. An appropriate-scale model was adopted. All the specimens have a cross-sectional dimension of 150 mm with an effective span of 110 mm. Depends on the experimental results, a better performance of the strengthened concrete specimens was obtained in both strength and serviceability. As a comparison with the control beam specimen, all the repaired specimens show a very good increase of about 40% in the load-carrying capacity and a high improvement in resistance to cracking of about 120% in NSM. On the other hand, the test results of NSM CFRP-strengthened concrete specimens with a preloading of 50% and 80% of the ultimate load show an increase of about 9% to 20% in the load-carrying capacity, for 50% and 80% pre-loading, respectively an improvement in deflection of about 2% to 27% in NSM, for 80% and 50% pre-loading, respectively.