Experimental study of the behaviour of RC corbels strengthened with CFRP sheets

This paper presents an experimental study of behaviour of externally strengthened short reinforced concrete (RC) corbels by carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) fabrics. For this purpose, twelve specimens were prepared and tested. The study inspected the effect of some parameters on the structural behaviour of corbels. The parameters included: the amount of internal secondary steel bars and external composite sheets configurations. The ultimate load obtained from static load resulted in up to 27% increase in the load bearing capacity through external CFRP composite reinforcement compared to control samples. The diagonal 45 °CFRP reinforcement constrained widening and growth of the shear cracks, and hereafter, improved the gain in the load capacity and axial toughness. The addition of secondary reinforcement at the mid-height of the corbels produced additional strength increase. Finally, the cracking and failure pattern modes of corbels are presented.