Flexural performance of reinforced concrete beams strengthened with prestressed near-surface-mounted FRP reinforcements

A numerical method for estimating the curvature, deflection and moment capacity of reinforced concrete beams strengthened with prestressed near-surface-mounted (NSM) FRP bars/strips is presented. A sectional analysis is carried out to predict the moment-curvature relationship from which beam deflections and moment capacity are then calculated. Based on the amount of FRP bars, different failure modes were identified, namely tensile rupture of prestressed FRP bars and concrete crushing before or after yielding of steel reinforcement. Comparisons between experimental results available in the literature and predicted curvature, moment capacity and deflection of reinforced concrete beams with prestressed NSM FRP reinforcements show good agreement. A parametric study concluded that higher prestressing levels improved the cracking and yielding loads, but decreased the beam ductility compared with beams strengthened with nonprestressed NSM FRP bars/strips.