RETROFIT EFFICIENCY USING FRP SHEETS: MECHANICS VIEWPOINT

Abstract eng:
Fiber Reinforced Plastics (FRP) are currently gaining a rapid momentum in finding their way into civil engineering structural applications. The greatest potential of FRPs in the near future will be in the areas of repair, strengthening, and rehabilitation of existing structures, such as externally bonded composite fabrics or jackets on beams, columns, and bridge decks. Significant improvements in compressive, shear, and flexural behavior of bonded concrete elements are obtained. In an effective retrofit with external FRP sheets, a layer of dry fiber sheet (usually unidirectional tape) is placed on the top of a coat of polymer resin that will harden to bond the fiber sheet to the concrete structure. In this paper, a fracture mechanics based micromechanical model is presented to describe the retrofit effect of using FRP sheets on concrete structures. The interaction between concrete crack and applied FRP sheets is treated by creating opposing bridging stress acting across the concrete crack flanks as a result of the FRP stretching. Such interactions depending on loading conditions will be discussed in terms of retrofit efficiency in this paper.

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