NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION OF THE BEHAVIOR OF RETROFITTED FLEXURAL CRACKED BEAM WITH EXTERNAL PLATE BONDING

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to study the effectiveness of using “External Plate Bonding” in flexural retrofitting of reinforced concrete (RC) beam. A simply supported rectangular RC beam is considered for this study. The steel plate and the CFRP (Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer) sheet are taken into consideration as bonded plates for retrofitting of RC beam. General purpose finite element program (ANSYS 11.0) is used to carry out non-linear analysis of uncracked, cracked and retrofitted RC beam. Based on the results obtained from numerical investigation it is seen that cracking in RC beam reduces the load carrying capacity of the beam. When retrofitting technique using steel or CFRP plate bonding externally is applied, stresses at the crack tip reduce significantly. Therefore, external plate bonding could be effectively applied in retrofitting of RC beam.