Textile-Reinforced Mortar (TRM) Strengthened One-Way Reinforced Concrete Slabs

Abstract

The issue of upgrading and strengthening the reinforced concrete (RC)infrastructure has become of great importance. Recently, textile-reinforcedmortar (TRM) was used in the field of structural strengthening. In the currentstudy, using of TRM for flexural retrofitting of one-way reinforced concrete (RC)slabs was experimentally and theoretically investigated. The parametersexamined included; the number of TRM layers (1, 3, 5 layers) and thestrengthening configuration fully and partially). For this purpose, eight specimenswere prepared and tested under three points- loading up to failure. The resultshowed that the TRM increases substantially the flexural capacity of RC slabs.The highest flexural capacity increase recorded was 103 %. It was also noted thatincreasing the number of retrofitting layers resulted in different increases in theflexural capacity. It was also shown that the strengthening configuration plays animportant role in the effectiveness of the technique. The fully covered approachshowed higher loading capacity than the partial cover technique provided that thesame TRM layer is applied. Finally, the ultimate moment of the strengthenedspecimens was calculated theoretically and compared with that obtainedexperimentally. The results of calculations showed a good agreement between thetheoretical and experimental results.