Tension Stiffening of Reinforced Concrete Shear Elements Strengthened with Externally Bonded FRP Sheets

摘要

The tensile contribution of concrete, known as tension stiffening, is usually neglected when calculatingrnthe strength of reinforced concrete (RC) members. However, tension stiffening affects the postcrackingrnstiffness and consequently the overall behavior in terms of deflection and crack width of thernmember under service load. There have been many investigations conducted on the tension stiffeningrneffect in RC members, but very few on Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) RC members. This paperrnpresents the results of a study of the tension stiffening in FRP RC members based on 12 full-scalerntensile tests. The results indicate that the presence of the externally bonded FRP material typicallyrnalters the main characteristics of the stress-strain relationships of concrete in tension and associatedrncrack patterns.