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Experimental and numerical study on the effect of repairing reinforced concrete cracked beams strengthened with carbon fibre reinforced polymer laminates

2014; NRC Research Press; Volume: 41; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1139/cjce-2013-0124

1208-6029

P. Duarte, João R. Correia, João Gomes Ferreira, Francisco Nunes, M.R.T. Arruda,

Innovative concrete reinforcement materials

This paper presents experimental and numerical investigations on the effect of repairing cracks in reinforced concrete (RC) beams prior to strengthening them with carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) laminates. The experimental campaign comprised flexural tests on three types of full-scale RC beams with T-shaped cross-section: (i) two reference un-strengthened beams, (ii) two CFRP-strengthened beams previously loaded and cracked, and (iii) two CFRP-strengthened beams, previously loaded, cracked and repaired with epoxy resin. The repair and strengthening techniques consisted of respectively injecting the cracks with epoxy resin and applying CFRP laminates according to the externally bonding reinforcement technique. In the numerical study, the structural response of all beams tested was simulated using the finite element software Atena, which features a smeared cracked model constitutive relationship for concrete. A parametric study was carried out in which the influence of material parameters, namely the fracture energy, on the beams structural response was assessed. Experimental results showed that repairing cracks by means of epoxy injection before strengthening them with CFRP laminates provided a considerable increase of stiffness, but only a slight increase of ultimate strength, as failure was triggered by the debonding of the strengthening system at the anchorage zones. In the numerical study a very good agreement with experimental data was obtained. For the repaired and strengthened beams, such agreement was obtained by increasing concrete’s fracture energy when compared to that of the reference beams.