An effective improvement for enhancing the strength and feasibility of FRP spike anchors

Spike anchors are promising remedies to prevent the debonding failure of FRP sheets. The performance of anchored FRP sheets largely depends on critical parameters such as the extending bond length of FRP sheet over the embedded spike and bend radius, greatly limiting their efficiency and feasibility in field. Moreover, their long-term performance dealing with possible bond loss is still unknown. Recently, an anchorage system consisting of a spike anchor and two patches has been developed. This anchorage system was expected to have several advantages over conventional spike anchors, which were rarely explored but are presented in this paper. A total of 21 experiments have been conducted to demonstrate their merits in terms of higher anchor strengths and minimizing the impacts of the extending bond length over the embedded spike, bend radius and FRP-concrete bond. Experimental results also suggest a great remedy to further improve the anchor efficiency by reducing the fanning angle. Thus, the proposed system could be considered as an efficient and feasible anchorage for FRP sheets