Textile-reinforced mortar (TRM) versus fibre-reinforced polymers (FRP) in flexural strengthening of RC beams

The aim of this paper is to compare the flexural performance of reinforced concrete (RC) beams strengthened with textile-reinforced mortar (TRM) and fibre-reinforced polymers (FRP). The investigated parameters included the strengthening material, namely TRM or FRP; the number of TRM/FRP layers; the textile surface condition (coated and uncoated); the textile fibre material (carbon, basalt or glass fibres); and the end-anchorage system of the external reinforcement. Thirteen RC beams were fabricated, strengthened and tested in four-point bending. One beam served as control specimen, seven beams strengthened with TRM, and five with FRP. It was mainly found that: (a) TRM was marginally less effective than FRP in enhancing the flexural capacity of RC beams. However, the effectiveness of TRM compared to FRP in increasing the flexural capacity is substantially depended on the parameters under investigation; (b) by tripling the number of TRM layers (from one to three), the TRM effectiveness increased from 47% to 80%; (c) providing coating to the dry textile, enhanced the TRM effectiveness and altered the failure mode; (d) different textile materials, having approximately same axial stiffness, resulted in different flexural capacity increases; and (e) providing end-anchorage has limited effect on the performance of TRM-retrofitted beam. Finally, a simple formula proposed by fib Model Code 2010 for FRP reinforcement, was also used to predict the mean debonding stress developed in the TRM reinforcement. It was found that this formula is in a good agreement with the average stress calculated based on the experimental results when failure was similar to FRP-strengthened beams.

RAOOF Saad M;  LAMPROS Koutas;  BOURNAS Dionysios; 

2017-06-27

ELSEVIER SCI LTD

JRC105870

0950-0618,   

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095006181730908X,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC105870,   

10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2017.05.023,