Structural performances of short steel-fiber reinforced concrete beams with externally bonded FRP sheets

Abstract

The application of externally bonding FRP sheets to concrete structures has become a popular strengthening procedure. However, such FRP strengthening effect sometimes could not be well achieved due to the premature interfacial debonding along FRP–concrete bond interface. In FRP-reinforced plain concrete members, the rapid propagation of localized flexural cracks in concrete is one of the primary reasons that cause the concentration of interfacial shear stress around where concrete crack happens, thus resulting in the debonding initiation. Therefore, an effective control of crack localization and propagation in concrete might be a solution to avoid or delay the debonding. This article presents an approach to improve the FRP strengthening performance to concrete beams by mixing short steel-fibers into the concrete matrix. To investigate the enhancement of FRP strengthening effect, a series of experiments are carried out, which include a standard JIS test of short four-point bending beams without FRP strengthening and a test of three-point bending FRP-strengthened concrete beams with different volume fractions of mixed short steel-fibers. The control of crack propagation and the increase of concrete toughness through mixing short steel-fibers are achieved. In the experiment of three-point bending, FRP-strengthened concrete beams increasing steel-fiber volume fraction, leads to a smeared crack distribution in the concrete. The ultimate failure mode also changes from peeling-induced debonding to FRP rupture so that the FRP sheet can exert its strengthening effect sufficiently. In addition, a finite element analysis is performed to compare the experimental results, in which the increase of concrete toughness is described by fracture energy. The simulation basically reproduces the experiments. The validity of the proposed approach is demonstrated.