Flexural strengthening of RC continuous Beams using hybrid FRP Sheets

Abstract

Due to linear stress-strain characteristics of FRP up to failure, the ductility of plated members and their ability to redistribute moment is less than that of unplated RC beams. Hybrid FRP laminates, which consist of a combination of either carbon and glass fibers, changes the behavior of the material to a non-linear behavior. Although many in situ RC beams are of continuous construction, there has been very little research into the behavior of such beams with external reinforcement. This paper presents an experimental program conducted to study the behaviour of RC two-span beams strengthened with hybrid carbon and glass reinforced polymer sheets (HCG). The program consists of a total of six continuous beams with overall dimensions equal to 250×150×6000 mm. The test results showed that using the HCG for strengthening the continuous RC beams lead to significantly increase of bearing capacity, ductility and moment redistribution ratio compared to strengthened beams with CFRP or GFRP. © Tsinghua University Press, Beijing and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011.