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CFRP sheets for flexural strengthening of RC beams

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 Composites: Part B 44 (2013) 604–612

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Composites: Part B
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/compositesb

Structural behaviour of RC beams with external flexural and flexural–shear

strengthening by FRP sheets
Jiangfeng Dong a,b, Qingyuan Wang a,⇑, Zhongwei Guan b
a
School of Architecture and Environment, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, PR China
b
School of Engineering, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3GQ, United Kingdom

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper presents experimental research on reinforced concrete (RC) beams with external flexural and
Received 25 November 2011 flexural–shear strengthening by fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) sheets consisting of carbon FRP (CFRP)
Received in revised form 16 January 2012 and glass FRP (GFRP). The work carried out has examined both the flexural and flexural–shear strength-
Accepted 14 February 2012
ening capacities of retrofitted RC beams and has indicated how different strengthening arrangements of
Available online 27 February 2012
CFRP and GFRP sheets affect behaviour of the RC beams strengthened. Research output shows that the
flexural–shear strengthening arrangement is much more effective than the flexural one in enhancing
Keywords:
the stiffness, the ultimate strength and hardening behaviour of the RC beam. In addition theoretical cal-
A. Carbon fibre
A. Glass fibre
culations are developed to estimate the bending and shear capacities of the beams tested, which are com-
B. Debonding pared with the corresponding experimental results.
B. Strength Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Flexural–shear strengthening

1. Introduction
Strengthening techniques for building structures have been
developed for many years to lengthen the service period and retro-
fit the damaged structures. There are many structures, due to ori-
ginal design limits and construction errors or an aggressive
environment conditions [1,2] such as disastrous earthquakes in
China and Japan in recent years, that need to be retrofitted to meet
the demand usage in a more economic and effective way [3,4]. The
techniques based on the externally bonded fibre reinforced poly-
mer (FRP) materials are the most widely used ones for retrofitting
damaged existing structures [5]. The reason for that is due to their
high strength-to-weight ratio, high stiffness, easy installation and
stable geometry during the service life [6–8].
Many studies [1–4,7–10] have been undertaken on the RC
beams retrofitted in flexural by FRP sheets through experimental,
finite element and analytical approaches. The studies have shown
that the beams strengthened with FRP in flexural strengthening
would avoid the debonding failure mode when a carefully designed
anchorage is applied [1,7,10–13], which gives a good flexural per-
formance in terms of strength and ductility. Although a lot of re-
search has been undertaken on the flexural strengthening by
using of FRP materials bonded onto the tension face of the beam,
the main focus was on the influence of FRP type, thickness and
width on the failure modes of RC beams strengthened [2,8,9,11–
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: wangqy@scu.edu.cn (Q. Wang).
18]. There were few of these studies covering the effect of beam
size [19] and concrete cover thickness [20] on the flexural strength
of beams strengthened.
Recently, there is increasingly widespread interesting on
strengthening RC beams using externally bonded FRP materials
to enhance their shear capacities [21–26]. Shear failure has differ-
ent characters as compared to bending failure, in which the former
is more brittle and often occurs without any forewarning [27]. Re-
search was also carried out to investigate the effects of longitudinal
tensile reinforcement ratio [15,21,28], shear span to effective
depth ratio [21,28,29], spacing of CFRP strips, and amount and ori-
entation of CFRP strips on the shear capacity of the precracked and
non-precracked beams [28]. Further experimental tests were
undertaken to investigate the effect of cross section depth and con-
crete strength on the shear performance of FRP strengthened RC
beams [15,30–36].
However, a lot of research focused on either the flexural or
shear failure, with few studies investigating the combined failures
[37]. The existing experimental [5,6] and analytical [7] research
demonstrated that FRP sheets and strips could enhance strength
and improve ductility of a beam more effectively if a combined
flexural and shear strengthening configuration was applied. Costa
and Barros [6] undertook research on the shear capacity of RC
beams and found that the load carrying capacity increased 50%
when the flexural strengthening was combined with the U or O
(full wrapping) shear strengthening.
The research work presented here focuses on the strengthening
efficiency of RC beams with different layers of CFRP sheets, and un-

1359-8368/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compositesb.2012.02.018
 J. Dong et al. / Composites: Part B 44 (2013) 604–612
der different pre-crack width, concrete cover thickness and the
flexural reinforcement ratio and shear reinforcement configura-
tions. A detailed experimental programme provides evaluations
of structural behaviour of the combined flexural–shear retrofitting
of RC beams by using CFRP sheets prebonded on the tension face of
the beam for flexural strengthening, and then reinforced in shear
by GFRP or CFRP sheets in U or L configurations. Other experimen-
tal parameters have been covered, which include the cross section
depth, the stirrups reinforcement ratio and the concrete strength in
the flexural–shear retrofitting tests. Research output shows that
the flexural–shear strengthening arrangement is much more effec-
tive than the flexural one in enhancing the stiffness, the ultimate
strength and hardening behaviour of the beam. In addition theoret-
ical calculations on estimating the bending and shear capacities of
the beams tested are presented and compared with the corre-
sponding experimental results in a reasonably good agreement.
2. Experimental work
2.1. Materials
Table 1 shows the material properties of the concrete, steel re-
bars and FRP (CFRP and GFRP) sheets which were used to make
specimens. Concrete mixes were designed with the grades of com-
pressive strength according to the Chinese Standard [38]. The mix
was made of ordinary Portland cement 32.5R, natural sand and
gravels with aggregate size between 10 and 31 mm. The average
compressive strengths (fc) were obtained from cube crush tests
on cubes with 150 mm side length at 28 days.
The longitudinal reinforcements are consisted of two steel re-
bars of 10 mm or 14 mm in diameter placed on the bottom and
two rebars of 8 mm in diameter on the top of the beam. For shear
reinforcement, stirrups of 6 mm in diameter were used. The yield
strength (fy), ultimate strength (fu), elastic modulus (E) and the
ultimate elongation (g) of the steel reinforcement (supplied by
the Shanxi Zhongyu Ironsteel Co. Ltd.) are also shown in Table 1.
Material properties of the CFRP and GFRP sheets (supplied by the
Shanghai keep strong in building technology engineering Co. Ltd.)
are shown in Table 1 as well.
2.2. Sample preparation
Table 2 shows seven concrete beams for flexural strengthening,
in which six beams were strengthened with either single layer or
two layers of CFRP sheets and one without retrofitting as a control
beam. The reason to attach either one layer or two layers of CFRP
sheets is to investigate how effective of the one extra layer is on
the crack load, ultimate load, strains and deflection of the beams
strengthened. Two strips of the U-shaped CFRP sheets were bonded
onto both sides of the beam near the supports as external anchor-
age to reduce the edge stresses and to prevent the delamination of
other CFRP sheets [39,40]. Table 2 also shows test variables cover-
ing reinforcement ratio, the longitudinal tensile reinforcement
Table 1
Material properties of concrete, steel rebars and FRP sheets.
Material Dimensions (mm)
Concrete C20
C30
Steel reinforcing D=6
D=8
D = 10
D = 14
CFRP sheets tf = 0.111
GFRP sheets tf = 0.273
605
ratio, shear span to effective depth ratio, and the concrete cover
thickness. The beam dimensions and reinforcing arrangements
are shown in Fig. 1.
Table 3 shows RC beams strengthened in the combined shear
and flexural manner, with two beams (SR1 and SR6) made with dif-
ferent concrete strengths for control purpose. The beam SR2 was
strengthened with one layer of GFRP sheets in a vertical U-shape
configuration. Four beams, SR3, SR4, SR5 and SR7, were strength-
ened with two layers of CFRP sheets in a diagonal L-shape config-
uration. The beams strengthened were all prebonded with one
layer of CFRP sheets of 100 mm in width and 1500 mm in length
on the tensile face of the beam for flexural strengthening. The main
parameters studied in the flexural–shear tests were the strength-
ening material (GFRP or CFRP), the number of FRP layer, the stir-
rups ratio, the beam height and the concrete strength. The beam
dimensions and reinforcing arrangements are shown in Fig. 2.
2.3. Test setup and loading procedures
All the beams were simply supported over a clear span of
1500 mm and tested under four-point bending, as shown in
Fig. 3. The load was applied using a servo controlled Shimadzu
hydraulic actuator (200 kN capacity) with a loading rate of 1 kN/
min. All beams were instrumented to measure strains on the main
tensile steel at mid-span, loading points and mid-shear span,
strains on the orthogonal internal stirrups and strains on the FRP
sheets. In addition, strains on the concrete over the depth of the
beams were measured in the mid-span section and three linear
voltage displacement transducers (LVDTs) were used to measure
deflections at the mid-span and loading points. The locations of
strain gauges on the steel, FRP sheets and concrete, as well as the
LVDTs are shown in Figs. 1–3. A hand held microscope with a res-
olution of 0.02 mm was used to measure the width of cracks. For
the beams with a pre-crack, the crack widths were the cracks new-
ly developed during the test. The load was applied monotonically
up to the failure. Four steel plates (100 mm wide and 20 mm thick)
were placed above the supports and underneath the loading points
to avoid local crushing on the beams tested.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Beams with flexural strengthening
3.1.1. Failure modes
The representative failure patterns for all beams tested are
shown in Fig. 4. The failure mode of the control beam CR1
(Fig. 4a) is a typical bending failure pattern. For the beams
strengthened with one or two layers of CFRP sheets, appearance
of cracks was delayed, also the width of those cracks and the in-
ter-space between cracks were reduced. There were two major fail-
ure modes for the beams strengthened, i.e. snapping and
debonding of CFRP sheets, and shear cracks propagated toward
the loading point accompanied by debonding of the CFRP sheets
fc (MPa) fy (MPa) fu (MPa) E (GPa) g (%)
22.8 – – – –
31.3 – – – –
– 240 420 210 30
– 330 490 210 28
– 340 480 210 28
– 410 555 200 28.5
– – 4103 242 1.7
– – 3400 73 2.7
606 J. Dong et al. / Composites: Part B 44 (2013) 604–612

Table 2
Properties of the beams with the flexural strengthening.

Beam h (mm) Concrete cover (mm) Tensile reinforcement Reinforcement ratio (%) Shear span ratio Precrack width (mm) CFRP provided
CR1 250 25 2/10 0.49 2.33 – None (control)
CR2 250 25 2/10 0.49 2.33 – CFRP sheetsa
CR3 250 25 2/10 0.49 2.33 – CFRP sheetsb
CR4 250 25 2/10 0.49 2.33 0.51 CFRP sheetsb
CR5 250 25 2/14 0.95 2.33 0.59 CFRP sheetsb
CR6 300 25 2/10 0.40 1.89 0.56 CFRP sheetsb
CR7 250 35 2/10 0.51 2.44 0.53 CFRP sheetsb
a
CFRP sheets (1500  100  0.111 mm) applied in one layer.
b
CFRP sheets (1500  100  0.111 mm) applied in two layers.

P/2 P/2
6@100 CFRP

2 8

250/300
2 10/14
100 50 100
Strain gauges CFRP
150
100 250 250 250 250 250 250 100

Fig. 1. Details of the beam for the flexural strengthening (dimensions in mm).

Table 3
Properties of the beams with the combined flexural and shear strengthening.

Beam h (mm) Concrete strength Stirrups web Stirrups ratio (%) Shear span ratio FRP provided
SR1 300 C20 /6@150 0.25 1.89 None (control)
SR2 300 C20 /6@150 0.25 1.89 GFRP sheetsa
SR3 300 C20 /6@150 0.25 1.89 CFRP sheetsb
SR4 300 C20 /6@100 0.38 1.89 CFRP sheetsb
SR5 250 C20 /6@150 0.25 2.33 CFRP sheetsb
SR6 300 C30 /6@150 0.25 1.89 None (control)
SR7 300 C30 /6@150 0.25 1.89 CFRP sheetsb
a
GFRP sheets (1500  50  0.273 mm) applied in one layer.
b
CFRP sheets (1500  50  0.111 mm) applied in two layers.

from the concrete. The failure mode of the beams, CR2, CR3 and
CR6, was characterised by the snapping of one layer (CR2) or two
layers (CR3 and CR6) of CFRP sheets that were bonded on the ten-
sile face of the beams (Fig. 4b). However, the beams of CR4, CR5
and CR7 were failed by the debonding of CFRP sheets initiated from
the mid-span (CR4) or under a loading point (CR5 and CR7), as
shown in Fig. 4c and d. All these are typical failure modes for
beams with external flexural FRP reinforcements.
3.1.2. Load-carrying capacity and deflection
Table 4 shows load carrying capacities corresponding to the first
crack and the ultimate load as well as the final deflections for var-
ious beams tested. From results shown in the Table, it can be seen
that the first crack load and ultimate load are depended primarily
on the number of layer of CFRP sheets, pre-loading conditions and
pre-crack width (Table 2). Comparing the beam CR2 with the beam
CR3 reinforced by one layer and two layers of CFRP sheets respec-
tively, the corresponding crack load and ultimate load are in-
creased by 23% and 22% respectively, whilst the deflection is
decreased by 39%. Therefore, one more layer of CFRP reinforcement
seems quite effective in enhancing the stiffness. The concrete cover
thickness seems having little influence on the first crack load,
which can be significantly enhanced through the increasing the
cross section depth of the beam strengthened. However, for the
same reinforcement the ultimate loads of the beams strengthened
are influenced more greatly by the longitudinal reinforcement ratio
than by cross section depth. This is specifically true to the beam
with a preloading history such as the beam CR4, whose ultimate
load was 55.4% higher than that of the control beam but 9.9% lower
than that of the beam CR3, with which had the same reinforce-
ment. The beam CR7, which has the biggest concrete cover thick-
ness, gives the lowest ultimate load, which is 14.1% and 4.7%
lower than that of the beams CR3 and CR4. The results indicate that
the big concrete cover thickness does not increase the ultimate
load of the beam strengthened. Results given in Table 4 show that
the beams strengthened give better performances than the control
beam as expected, in terms of load carrying capacity and ductility.
However, preloading on the beams results in a decrease in flexural
strength and ultimate ductility.
The ultimate load carrying capacity of the beams strengthened
in flexural also can be estimated from the design models by adding
the steel contribution [7] and the FRP contribution, which was pro-
posed by Toutanji et al. [2],
PIana ¼ 6  As  fy  d=l  3:54  ðAs  fy Þ2 =ðfc  b  lÞ þ 6  Af  Ef  R
 efu  ðh  xÞ=l ð1Þ
Barros et al. [15] also proposed another formulation to calculate the
ultimate load of the beams strengthened
PIIana ¼ 6  As  fy  ðd  0:4  xÞ=l þ 5:1  Af  Ef  R  efu  ðh  0:4  xÞ=l
ð2Þ
where As is the area of steel rebars, Af is the area of CFRP sheets, fy is
the yield strength of steel (MPa), d is the effective beam depth, fc is
the ultimate concrete strength (MPa), Ef is the elastic modulus of
CFRP sheets, efu is the ultimate strain of CFRP, b is the width of
 J. Dong et al. / Composites: Part B 44 (2013) 604–612 607

P/2 P/2
6@100/150

2 8

250/300
2 14

Strain gauges CFRP 100

100 1500 100 150

(a) Details of reinforcement

GFRP sheets
Strain gauges
150

CFRP
100 1500 100

(b) U shape arrangement.

CFRP sheets
Strain gauges
150

CFRP
100 1500 100

(c) L shape arrangement.

Fig. 2. Typical details of a beam tested with the shear–flexural strengthening arrangement. (a) Details of reinforcement. (b) U shape arrangement. (c) L shape arrangement.

(a) Test setup.

Pressure distribution beam

Strain gauges

LVDT 2 LVDT 1 LVDT 3

100 1500 100
(b) Equipment location along the beams tested.
Fig. 3. The schematic view and the test setup. (a) Test setup. (b) Equipment location along the beams tested.

the beam section, l is the length of the beam, x is the height of con- to account for the influence of pre-crack and debonding. The values
crete compressive zone. Here R is the reduction factor, equal to 0.5, estimated by Eqs. (1) and (2), PIana and P IIana , are compared to the
608 J. Dong et al. / Composites: Part B 44 (2013) 604–612
(a) Flexural failure of the control beam.
(b) Snapped CFRP sheet.
(c) CFRP debonding from mid-span.
(d) CFRP debonding under a loading point.
Fig. 4. The failure modes of beams with the flexural strengthening. Flexural failure
of the control beam, Snapped CFRP sheet, CFRP sheet debonding from mid-span,
CFRP debond under a loading point.
experimental ones, Pexp, and the ratios of P Iana =Pexp and PIIana =P exp are
evaluated in Table 4. It can be seen that the estimated values are
lower than those obtained by experiments for beams CR1, CR2
and CR3. The likely reason may be that the derivations of Eqs. (1)
and (2) were initially based on the ACI Code [41] by assuming the
maximum strain on concrete as 0.003, which was implicitly built
in the equations. In fact, such the assumed strain might underesti-
mate the practical maximum strain on concrete for beams without
the pre-crack (CR1, CR2 and CR3). As a result, the lower theoretical
calculations were provided for those RC beams with or without
external reinforcement [15]. However, for the pre-cracked beams,
the comparisons have shown that the proposed model agrees rea-
sonably well with the experimental results. The small difference be-
tween the experimental measurements and theoretical values for
beams CR5 and CR6 may be due to the variation of the beam dimen-
sion and steel reinforcement ratio [2].
Fig. 5 shows Load–deflection curves of the beams tested, which
indicates the initial stiffness of the beams strengthened increased
significantly in comparison to the control beam due to the contri-
bution from CFRP reinforcement. The higher longitudinal rein-
forcement ratio (CR5) or deeper cross section depth (CR6)
(Table 2) lead to a higher stiffness than that of the beam CR4,
which has the same pre-loading condition with beams CR5 and
CR6. However, the beam CR5 gives a much higher yielding load
and ultimate load than those of the beam CR6. The likely reason
may be that the longitudinal reinforcement ratio is more effective
than the cross section depth. The stiffness of the beams CR4 and
CR7, which have the same internal reinforcement but different
concrete cover thickness, is almost the same (Fig. 5). This indicates
that the concrete cover thickness may not be an apparent influen-
tial factor to the bending stiffness.
3.2. Beams with flexural–shear strengthening
3.2.1. Failure modes and loads
Fig. 6 shows the failure modes of the beams with the external
flexural–shear strengthening. The failure mode of the control beam
SR1 (C20) is a typical shear failure (Fig. 6a). However, the failure
mode of the control beam SR6 (C30) showed some difference from
SR1, which also had some shear cracks in shear span that expanded
toward to the loading points during the test, but it failed by the
flexural crack near a loading point propagated vertically upwards
to the top side of the beam, as shown in Fig. 6b. This was likely
caused by the different concrete strengths for SR1 and SR6, with
the former 37% lower than the latter. For the GFRP strengthened
beam SR2, the flexural cracks were first initiated, then some small
shear cracks occurred and propagated to the loading points, how-
ever, the ultimate failure was caused by rapidly developing the
flexural crack near the mid-span (Fig. 6c). The debonding failure
occurred for the beams strengthened by two layers of CFRP sheets
in a diagonal arrangement. The beams SR3 and SR4 were failed by
the debonding of CFRP sheets due to fracture of the CFRP on the top
lateral face (Fig. 6d). However, the beam SR5 was failed by the deb-
onding of the CFRP anchorage (Fig. 6e). Finally the beam SR7 was
failed by debonding of CFRP sheets on the bottom face (Fig. 6f).
Therefore, it is very crucial to prevent any premature debonding.
Table 5 shows the first crack load, the ultimate failure load and
the corresponding deflection as well as the failure modes for the
beams with the flexural–shear strengthening. The first crack loads
of SR2 and SR3, which were strengthened by one layer of GFRP
sheets in the vertical arrangement and two layers of CFRP sheets
in the diagonal arrangement respectively, are 27.8% and 110%
higher than that of the control beam SR1. The beam SR4 gives
the highest first crack load of 90.7 kN, which is 122.6% higher than
that of the control beam due to the highest stirrups reinforcement
ratio on top of the FRP reinforcement. The results show that the
first crack load can be increased greatly by increasing the stirrups
reinforcement ratio, also that the concrete strength and cross sec-
tion depth have an evident influence on the first crack load. The
ultimate loads of SR2 and SR3 are 31.1% and 67.8% higher than that
 J. Dong et al. / Composites: Part B 44 (2013) 604–612 609

Table 4
Test results the theoretical calculations of the beams with the flexural strengthening.

Beam Crack load (kN) Ultimate load (kN) Deflection (mm) Toutanji et al. [2] Barros et al. [15] Failure modesa

P Iana (kN) P Iana =P exp P IIana (kN) P IIana =P exp

CR1 27.66 54.30 4.00 45.01 0.83 46.97 0.87 A

CR2 31.56 76.93 22.41 65.44 0.85 63.31 0.82 B
CR3 38.91 93.66 13.61 85.85 0.92 81.89 0.87 B
CR4 37.87 84.39 10.24 85.85 1.02 81.89 0.97 C
CR5 18.28 121.7 16.31 133.35 1.10 132.39 1.09 D
CR6 73.35 95.89 8.38 105.66 1.10 100.33 1.05 B
CR7 27.66 80.45 12.70 83.72 1.04 79.76 0.99 D
a
A is flexural failure; B is CFRP snapping and flexural failure; C is CFRP debonding and shear failure; D is CFRP debonding and flexural failure.

125
sheets, sf is the spacing of FRP sheets, efu is the ultimate strain of FRP
100 CR1 sheets. R is the reduction factor and can be determined as [21]
Load (kN)

75
50
25
0
0 6 12 18
Mid span deflection (mm)
Fig. 5. Load–deflection curves of the beams with the flexural strengthening.
of the control beam SR1. The beam SR4 gives the higher ultimate
load than that of the beam SR3 due to the higher stirrups reinforce-
ment ratio in it. The beam SR5 with a smaller cross section depth
shows the ultimate load of 158.5 kN, which is 42.2% higher than
that of the control beam. However, this result is 15.3% lower than
that of the beam SR3, which has the same internal reinforcement
as the beam SR5. Comparing the crack and the ultimate failure
loads of the beams in the flexural–shear strengthening with those
in the flexural only strengthening, the enhancement for the former
is doubled in most cases (Table 4). However, influence on the
deflection offered by the flexural–shear strengthening is not signif-
icant, i.e. there is not much reduction of the deflection on the beam
in comparison to the beam with the flexural only strengthening
(Table 5).
The shear capacity of a RC beam strengthened with FRP mate-
rial, Vana, can be estimated by summarising the shear strength con-
tributions from the concrete [31], steel reinforcement [22,35] and
FRP (Vf), which can be expressed as
 a pffiffiffiffiffi Av  fy
V ana ¼ 0:44  1  0:35   fcu  b  d þ  d  cot h þ V f
d s
where a is the effective clear shear span, fcu is the concrete cube
compressive strength, Av is the cross sectional area of the shear
reinforcement, s is the spacing of the stirrups, fy is the steel design
yielding strength and h is the critical shear crack angle with respect
to the longitudinal axis of the beam.
The FRP contribution suggested by Lee et al. [31], which com-
bined the influence of the elastic modulus (Ef), inclination of FRP
sheets (b) and FRP reinforcement ratio (qf), may be shown as
V If ¼ qf  R  ðsin b þ cos bÞ  df  b  Ef  efu
Larbi et al. [42] also proposed the FRP shear contribution as
V IIf ¼ 0:9  qf  R  ðcot h þ cot bÞ  sin b  Ef  efu  b  d
where qf in Eq. (5) is equal to 2(tf/b)(wf/sf), df is the effective depth
of FRP sheets, tf is the thickness of FRP sheets, wf is the width of FRP
CR2
CR3 R ¼ 0:39  ðqf  Ef Þ2  0:85  qf  Ef þ 0:55 6 0:006=efu ð6Þ
CR4
CR5 The maximum value of R is set to equal to 0.5 in Eq. (5) [42].
CR6 However, Jayaprakash et al. [28] and El-Ghandour [37] indicated
CR7 that the maximum value of 0.004/efu should be appropriate in Eq.
(4) to estimate the shear capacity of beams strengthened. The val-
24 ues obtained by combining the Eq. (3) and Eqs. (4), (5), and the ra-
tios of those estimated values to the experimental ones are shown
in Table 5. Here the value of h is taken as the default value of 45°. It
can be seen that the shear capacities of the beams obtained by
experiments and by the theoretical estimations are correlated rea-
sonably well (i.e. their ratios are close to one), except for the beam
SR5 with a smaller cross section depth. This is likely caused by the
debonding failure of CFRP sheets, which led to the effective strains
on CFRP sheets being underestimated in the theoretical approach
(Table 5).
3.2.2. Load–deflection behaviour
Load–deflection curves of the beams with the flexural–shear
strengthening are shown in Fig. 7. It can be seen that the stiffness
of beams strengthened cannot be increased effectively by increas-
ing the stirrups reinforcement ratio (comparing SR3 with SR4 in
Table 3). The beam SR5 gives the lowest stiffness, even lower than
that of the control beam SR1, which indicates lowering beam depth
by 17% (Table 3) overtaking effect of the reinforcement on the stiff-
ness. The beam SR7 gives the highest stiffness among the beams
strengthened due to the higher concrete strength. Therefore, for
the same reinforcing arrangement, the concrete strength and cross
section depth have a significant influence on the beam stiffness,
whilst the internal stirrups reinforcement ratio has a little influ-
ence. However, all beams with flexural–shear reinforcement show
ð3Þ a much higher load carrying capacity and better hardening behav-
iour in comparison to the beams with flexural reinforcement only
(Fig. 5).
3.2.3. Strains on the concrete, steel stirrups and FRP
Fig. 8 shows the relationships between the applied load and the
strains recorded on the concrete, steel and FRP sheets. The strains
on concrete were obtained from the strain gauge attached to the
lateral face near the bottom of the beam (Fig. 3b), whilst the strains
on steel and FRP were the ones taken from the strain gauges on the
ð4Þ longitudinal steel bar and the FRP sheet at the shear span zone un-
der the loading point (Fig. 2). As shown in Fig. 8a, the beams
strengthened indicate the slightly lower compressive strains on
ð5Þ the concrete than that of the control beam SR1, except for the
beam of SR5 which has a smaller cross section depth. However,
there is no apparent gain on the maximum strain on the concrete
by increasing the stirrups reinforcement ratio and concrete strength.
610 J. Dong et al. / Composites: Part B 44 (2013) 604–612

(d) Fracture of CFRP sheets at the top

(a) Shear failure of the control beam SR1.
lateral face.

(e) Debonding of CFRP sheets from

(b) Flexural failure of the control beam SR6.
the debonding of anchorage.

(c) Flexural failure of the GFRP strengthened (f) Debonding of CFRP sheets from the
beam SR2. bottom face.
Fig. 6. Failure models of the beams with the flexural–shear strengthening.

Table 5
Experimental results and theoretical calculations of the beams with the flexural–shear strengthening.

Beam Crack load (kN) Ultimate load (kN) Deflection (mm) Vexp (kN) Lee et al. [31] Larbi et al. [42] Failure modea

V Iana (kN) V Iana =V exp V IIana (kN) V IIana =V exp

SR1 40.72 111.49 4.70 55.75 52.34 0.94 52.34 0.94 A

SR2 52.05 146.20 16.55 73.1 73.46 1.00 71.35 0.98 B
SR3 85.53 187.12 12.13 93.56 93.60 0.99 88.58 0.95 C
SR4 90.65 187.74 12.40 93.87 104.59 1.11 100.57 1.07 C
SR5 35.56 158.49 16.92 79.25 64.73 0.82 61.46 0.76 D
SR6 35.05 115.81 8.55 57.91 57.21 0.99 57.21 0.99 B
SR7 67.08 193.35 16.12 96.68 97.47 1.01 93.45 0.97 C
a
A is shear failure; B is flexural failure; C is CFRP snapping and flexural failure; D is CFRP debonding and shear failure.

Strains on the steel bar (Fig 8b) can be reduced significantly by
applying for two layers of the CFRP sheet. However, with regards
to beam strengthened by the same reinforcement, the concrete
strength has a greater effect on reducing the strains on the steel
than the internal stirrups reinforcement ratio (comparing SR7 to
SR4 in Table 3). The strains on the steel bars for beams with the
same CFRP reinforcement ratio but different depths are similar
(SR3, SR4 and SR5 in Fig. 8b), suggesting that the influence of the
beam depth on the stiffness of a RC beam with the external FRP
reinforcement is small. Strains on the FRP (Fig. 8c) for a given load
 J. Dong et al. / Composites: Part B 44 (2013) 604–612 611

200 Table 6
Data of cracks at the post-failure phase for the beams tested in the flexural–shear
strengthening.
150
Beam Maximum width (mm) Distance from support (mm) Numbers
Load (kN)

SR1 SR1 65 270 8

100 SR2 SR2 4.9 712 6
SR3 SR3 5 733 6
SR4 SR4 8 530 7
50 SR5 SR5 7 755 5
SR6 SR6 17 600 8
SR7 SR7 2 688 4
0
0 6 12 18
Mid span deflection (mm)
200
Fig. 7. Load–deflection curves of the beams with the flexural–shear strengthening.

150

Load (kN)
200 SR1
100 SR2
SR3
150 SR4
Load (kN)

SR1 50 SR5
SR2 SR6
100
SR3 SR7
SR4
0
50 SR5 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
SR6
SR7 Initial crack width (mm)
0
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 Fig. 9. Load versus crack width prior to the failure for the beams with the shear–
Strains on the concrete (microstrain) flexural strengthening.

(a) Strains on the concrete.

(SR4). In general, the most significant influence factor on reducing
200 strains on the steel bars and FRP (so enhancing the beam stiffness)
is the number of FRP layer attached.

150
3.2.4. Cracking behaviour
Load (kN)

SR1 The measurements on cracks of the beams tested at the post-

100
SR2 failure phase are shown in Table 6. It can be seen that the beams
SR3 strengthened have a much smaller crack width and exhibit a less
SR4
50 number of cracks than those of the control beams SR1 (C20) and
SR5
SR6 SR6 (C30) as expected. The smallest number of cracks appears in
SR7 the beam with two layers of CFRP reinforcement and the higher
0 concrete strength (SR7).The relationships between the load and
0 2000 4000 6000 8000
the corresponding crack width measured prior to failure are shown
Strains on the steel (microstrain)
in Fig. 9. The ultimate crack width on the beam SR4 is the smallest
(b) Strains on the steel. one, which means the internal stirrups reinforcement ratio is more
effective than the concrete strength to control crack growth. In
addition only one layer reinforcement of the GFRP sheet (SR2)
200
has no clear effect on reducing crack width (SR1).

150
Load (kN)

SR2
4. Conclusions
100 SR3
SR4 The experimental results have demonstrated that both the flex-
50 SR5 ural and the flexural–shear strengthening capacity of the RC beams
SR7 using externally bonded of CFRP or GFRP sheets on bottom and/or
0 lateral faces can significantly enhance the flexural and shear capac-
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 4500 ity of the beams strengthened. The increase on the overall flexural
Strains on the FRP (microstrain) capacity of the CFRP strengthened beams varies between 41% and
125% over the control beam, and on the shear capacity of the GFRP
(c) Strains on the FRP. or CFRP strengthened beams between 31% and 74%. From the
Fig. 8. Load–strain curves of the beams with the flexural–shear strengthening. investigation, it has shown that the FRP sheets could not only in-
crease strength and stiffness of the beams strengthened but also
can be increased greatly by reducing the cross section depth (SR5). control development of cracks and increase ductility of the beams.
The strains on the FRP were decreased by increasing the concrete In comparison the flexural–shear strengthening to the flexural
strength (SR7) and the internal stirrups reinforcement ratio strengthening, the former has demonstrated much more signifi-
612 J. Dong et al. / Composites: Part B 44 (2013) 604–612
cant enhancement on load carrying capacity, initial stiffness and
hardening behaviour for the beams strengthened.
For the beams with a pre-crack and strengthened with exter-
nally bonded of CFRP sheets in the flexural strengthening, the rein-
forcement arrangements applied in this work are effective in
enhancing the flexural strength and ductility. Both of the strength
and ductility for the beams strengthened can be enhanced signifi-
cantly by increasing the internal longitudinal reinforcement, but
the preloading may result in a small decrease in flexural strength,
stiffness and ductility. The flexural load carrying capacity and
deformability of beams with the same strengthening arrangements
are significantly increased with an additional layer of CFRP sheets.
In addition for the same reinforcing arrangement, the cross-section
depth and the reinforcement ratio seem having more influence on
the load carrying capacity and initial stiffness on the beam. For the
beams with the same flexural–shear strengthening, their load car-
rying capacity and stiffness can be increased with the higher con-
crete strength. However, such the increases may not be realised by
enhancing the internal stirrups reinforcement ratio or by only one
layer of the FRP reinforcement.
Theoretical predictions of the flexural strength and the ultimate
shear carrying capacity have been developed based on the existing
theories, which show reasonably good correlation to the corre-
sponding experimental results. However, in order to develop more
rational and accurate predictive models further experimental work
and theoretical research are required to cover various concrete
strengths, internal longitudinal steel reinforcements and FRP types.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support
provided by the Natural Science Foundation of China (No.
10772125) and the National Science Foundation for Distinguished
Young Scholars of China (No. 10925211). The first author has been
supported by the China Scholarship Council (CSC) which is greatly
appreciated.
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