Shear Strengthening of Reinforced Concrete Beams Using Externally Bonded Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plates
type: CreativeWork
description: The fundamental aim of this study was to investigate the behaviour of reinforced concrete beams strengthened in shear by the addition of Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plastics (CFRP). An experimental programme was devised to investigate the shear behaviour of reinforced concrete beams strengthened by the attachment of different configurations and quantities of CFRP using epoxy adhesives. Finite Element Analysis (FEA) was used to model the behaviour of some of the strengthened beams. Thirty-eight reinforced concrete beams of 1.8 m length were constructed and tested. All the beams were designed to fail in shear. The following variables were taken into consideration: main reinforcement ratio, shear reinforcement and spacing between links in the shear span, and different configurations of CFRP plates on shear spans. The concrete strength was intended to be a consistent mixture but the cube strengths varied between 50 to 70 N/mm2 . The CFRP's role was to prevent significant opening of the shear cracks in the concrete. All beams tested showed a significant improvement in shear strength by the addition of plates. The increase varied between 20-120 % over the control beams. It was observed that there is a relationship between the increased ratio of the shear strength and the CFRP area, which covered the shear span. The best arrangement was to cover the whole shear span with horizontal unidirectional (UD) CFRP sheets. The optimum economic solution was to cover half of the shear span area using two horizontal CFRP strips, although the positioning of these strips may be critical. This solution increased the shear strength by about 50 %. One important outcome was the significant increase achieved by using wrapping fabric sheets. Despite the fact that wrapping materials have lower properties, they provided a considerable enhancement in shear strength of about 80% of what the pultruded plates are capable of developing. It should be noted that this contradicts the design guidelines prov…
abstract: The fundamental aim of this study was to investigate the behaviour of reinforced concrete beams strengthened in shear by the addition of Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plastics (CFRP). An experimental programme was devised to investigate the shear behaviour of reinforced concrete beams strengthened by the attachment of different configurations and quantities of CFRP using epoxy adhesives. Finite Element Analysis (FEA) was used to model the behaviour of some of the strengthened beams. Thirty-eight reinforced concrete beams of 1.8 m length were constructed and tested. All the beams were designed to fail in shear. The following variables were taken into consideration: main reinforcement ratio, shear reinforcement and spacing between links in the shear span, and different configurations of CFRP plates on shear spans. The concrete strength was intended to be a consistent mixture but the cube strengths varied between 50 to 70 N/mm2 . The CFRP's role was to prevent significant opening of the shear cracks in the concrete. All beams tested showed a significant improvement in shear strength by the addition of plates. The increase varied between 20-120 % over the control beams. It was observed that there is a relationship between the increased ratio of the shear strength and the CFRP area, which covered the shear span. The best arrangement was to cover the whole shear span with horizontal unidirectional (UD) CFRP sheets. The optimum economic solution was to cover half of the shear span area using two horizontal CFRP strips, although the positioning of these strips may be critical. This solution increased the shear strength by about 50 %. One important outcome was the significant increase achieved by using wrapping fabric sheets. Despite the fact that wrapping materials have lower properties, they provided a considerable enhancement in shear strength of about 80% of what the pultruded plates are capable of developing. It should be noted that this contradicts the design guidelines prov…
author: Abdel-Jaber, Ma'en
language: en
date modified: 2026-07-24T03:42:18Z
provider: Oxford Brookes University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Oxford Brookes University

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.24384/t7wp-0w29