Reinforced concrete beams strengthened with carbon fiber reinforced polymer by friction hybrid bond technique: Experimental investigation

• Friction Hybrid Bonded FRP Technique is conducted to strengthen RC beams.
• Six specimens with different reinforced methods were tested.
• The strengthened effects of different strengthening methods were discussed.
• The results obtained from the FEA and experiments are agreed very well.

Carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) can be used to strengthen the reinforced concrete (RC) beams. But premature debonding is the main failure model in ordinary bond technique, and the strengthening effect is limited. In order to improve bonding and restricting sliding displacement, Friction Hybrid Bonded FRP Technique (FHB-FRP) is developed. Six simple-span RC specimen beams with different strengthened methods were tested in four-point bending. The experiment results indicate that FRP debonding can be effectively prevented by the FHB-FRP strengthened beam. The ultimate load-carrying capacity of the specimen strengthened by FHB-FRP technique is able to increase by a factor of 2.13 times compared with the beam strengthened with ordinary bond technique (U-jacketing technique). In addition, the cracking and yielding loads are improved more significantly by FHB-FRP technique than U-jacketing technique. Specimens strengthened with FHB-FRP technique have cracks with a more limited distribution and width. Finally, the finite element method (FEM) is conducted to simulate the behavior of the test specimens. The results obtained from the finite element method are compared with experiment. Excellent agreements have been achieved in the comparison of results.