An efficient design procedure for flexural strengthening of RC beams based on ACI 440.2R-08

The technology of using FRP composites to strengthen concrete members has proven its effectiveness over the years. Accordingly, design guides have been developed to aid engineers in applying this technology. ACI 440.2R-08 is one of the major design guides used in the US and elsewhere in the world. Due to the existence of two major sectional tensile forces in steel and FRP as well as the likelihood of different failure modes, the ACI 440.2R-08 flexural strengthening design procedure leads to an iterative process. In this study an efficient design procedure that eliminates the need for iterations is developed. The FRP area determined from the developed design procedure has been shown to correlate very accurately to the exact area obtained iteratively according to the ACI 440.2R-08 document. Several design examples are solved to illustrate the potential use of this efficient and simple design procedure in expediting the current design computations.