Theoretical model on interface failure mechanism of reinforced concrete continuous beam strengthened by FRP

ABSTRACTFiber reinforced polymer (FRP) composites are increasingly being used for the repair and strengthening of deteriorated concrete structural components through adhesive bonding of prefabricated strips/plates and the wet lay-up of fabric. Interfacial bond failure modes have attracted the attention of researchers because of the importance. The objective of the present study is to analyse the interface failure mechanism of reinforced concrete continuous beam strengthened by FRP. An analytical solution has been firstly presented to predict the entire debonding process of the model. The realistic bi-linear bond-slip interfacial law was adopted to study this problem. The crack propagation process of the loaded model was divided into four stages (elastic, elastic-softening, elastic-softening-debonded and softening-debonded stage). Among them, elastic-softening-debonded stage has four sub-stages. The equations are solved by adding suitable stress and displacement boundary conditions. Finally, critical value of bond length is determined to make the failure mechanism in the paper effective by solving the simultaneously linear algebraic equations. The interaction between the upper and lower FRP plates can be neglected if axial stiffness ratio of the concrete-to-plate prism is large enough.