Influence of Anchorage on the Behavior of CFRP RC Beams in Flexure

Abstract

This research study involves experimental and theoretical investigations of thebehavior of flexural debonding of carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) laminateswith steel anchorages. A total of nine reinforced concrete beam specimens with crosssection of (150mm width by 250mm height and 2000mm length) were investigated inthis study to observe the flexural strength of each one. Eight beam specimens werestrengthened with CFRP laminates and one beam specimen was tested withoutstrengthening. The experimental results showed that the use of CFRP strips as externalstrengthening has significant positive effect on ultimate loads, crack patterns anddeflections. The percent of increasing of the ultimate load capacity can be increased byabout 65% when using two layers of CFRP strips instead of one layer. The ultimateload is increased by about 118% for the beams strengthened with bonded CFRP andexternal anchorage with respect to the reference beam. Three-dimensional nonlinearfinite element analysis (i.e. ANSYS - version 9.0 computer program ) is used toinvestigate the performance of reinforced concrete beams strengthened with CFRP.The comparison between the numerical and the experimental results asserted that goodvalidity of the numerical analysis and the methodology developed in this study.