Behaviour of Shear-critical Reinforced Concrete Beams Retrofitted with Externally Applied Fibre-reinforced Polymers

Ageing infrastructure that is shear deficient and may be at risk of brittle collapse, particularly in seismically active regions, can be economically strengthened using externally bonded fibre-reinforced polymers (FRP). Although many studies have been conducted on small-scale specimens subject to monotonic loading, little experimental data exists for large-scale specimens and those tested under reversed cyclic loading to simulate a seismic event. An experimental study of large-scale (400 mm x 650 mm) beam specimens strengthened in shear with FRP was conducted to examine the effects of reversed cyclic loading and to quantify material shear strength contributions. Testing showed that FRP retrofits were highly effective at improving shear performance and were not adversely affected by reversed cyclic loading prior to the occurrence of flexural yielding. The shear resistance attributed to concrete was found to remain relatively consistent with reversed cyclic loading prior to flexural yielding, after which point concrete strength decay was apparent. The loss of concrete shear resistance directly influenced the rate of FRP straining and the achievable ductility. An analytical model using the Modified Compression Field Theory (MCFT) was developed for externally bonded FRP reinforcement to describe the experimental behaviour and to evaluate the accuracy of current FRP design methods. Failures were accurately modelled when appropriate FRP strain limits were used for the ultimate strength and for the stress transfer capacity across the shear crack. Proposed FRP strain limits were developed considering the strain distribution along the crack plane. In addition, improved strain limits incorporate the effect of rupture failure due to stress concentrations in the FRP wrapped around the beam corners. The proposed FRP formulations offer improved accuracy over the current FRP design methods (CSA S6-06 and ACI 440.2R-08), which suggest a broadly applied maximum strain limit of 0.004 mm/mm, which was determined to be overly conservative for FRP rupture failures.Ph