Shear Strengthening of Reinforced Concrete Beams with HFRP Composite

Abstract

This paper presents an experimental study on the strengthening of scaled reinforced concrete (RC) deep beam using hemp fiber reinforced polymer (HFRP) composite. HFRP is the composite material which compose of hemp fiber bonding with epoxy resin. The major benefit of using hemp fiber is that their low price, high toughness, and hemp is natural fiber product which that can be found locally. In this study 2 different fiber orientation has been apply to scaled deep beam and also different in thickness (fiber layer). Three scaled deep beam were strengthened using HFRP composite, remaining one beam was tested as control (unstrengthen) beam. The test result show that HFRP composite are effective to enhance ultimate load capacity for RC beam. The HFRP composite applied in U-Shape was result into higher ultimate load compare with the sample that applied with both side strengthen method