The Shear Behaviour of Concrete Beams Strengthened with CFRP

This book formulates a new proposal for shear strengthening of concrete beams using CFRP. The bond strengths predicted using existing methods and new proposals from this study are compared with experimental data of this study and previous studies, demonstrating that the new proposals are valid and offer improvement over existing methods. The research programme to study the shear contribution of externally bonded CFRP sheets/strips of RC beams includes laboratory tests of more than twenty-nine beam samples (of an original conceptual model incorporating a shear plane) with beams of different materials: nine aluminium beams, twenty concrete beams, and some timber beams for initial studies. There are twenty-six pure tensile laboratory tests to study bond behaviour between the parent material and CFRP. In addition, there are six pure shear specimens and tests to determine other material properties. The numerical analyses employ the finite element method and many numerical models are developed for simulation of the contribution of the CFRP for shear strengthening and bond strength. On completion of the experimental programme and FE analyses.