Flexural strengthening of RC beams using textile reinforced mortar – Experimental and numerical study

In this paper, the effectiveness of textile reinforced mortars (TRMs), as a means of increasing the flexural capacity of reinforced concrete (RC) beams, is experimentally and numerically investigated. A new type of textile (basalt-based textile) was used as strengthening material. The studied parameters included type of mortar, number of TRM layers and type of strengthening material: TRM versus carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites. A total of six beams were tested under four-point bending till failure. Two beams were used as control specimens. Three beams were externally upgraded by TRM sheets for enhancing their flexural capacity; and one beam was strengthened with CFRP laminates for comparison with its TRM counterpart. Besides the experimental program, a numerical investigation utilizing nonlinear finite element (FE) analysis was carried out using LS-DYNA software. In addition to the six beams tested in this study, another three beams were collected from the literature for the purpose of finite element validation. A comparison was made between the experimental and numerical results and good agreement was obtained. Based on the validation of FE results, the numerical analysis was extended to include additional cases to study the flexural enhancement of RC beams using more TRM layers with different end anchorages.