Relative behaviour of premature failures in adhesively plated RC beam using controllable and existing parameters

Retrofitting of RC beam by gluing a steel plate at the soffit has been a widely adopted technique due to its ease of use, calculations and having minimal variations on structural aesthetics; hence, a large number of such retrofitted structures exist today. However, such structures have also failed frequently due to the formation of premature failures such as peeling and debonding. The further investigations conducted in literature indicated that such undesirable failures can be effected by a large number of geometrical and material parameters. Although, the characterisation and relative influence of such parameters on modes of failures remain unknown; as the past studies have been largely case sensitive or focussing on a small set of parameters. Therefore, to address these issues, a simple but focussed numerical model has been validated through literature for multiple modes of failures over wide range of possible parameters. Further, targeting the response of beam and its critical locations, the authors of this study suggest that the understanding of relative impact of effective parameters, in terms of beam capacity and brittleness of modes of failure, can be broadly utilised to re-evaluate the cause(s) of failure(s) through case studies, or to predict the future of retrofitted structures/beams.