COMPARISON BETWEEN TRC AND CFRP AS EXTERNAL REINFORCEMENT FOR PLAIN CONCRETE BEAMS

摘要

Strengthening and repairing existing structures is often more economical and sustainable than demolishing and afterwards rebuilding them. Concrete structures can be strengthened using high performance glass fibre Textile Reinforced Cements (TRC) as an external reinforcement. Until now no evaluation of the cracking behaviour of this system with respect to the established technique of CFRP strips is reported. This paper presents the experimental comparison between both techniques, based on four point bending tests with third point loading, where the crack pattern evolution is monitored with Digital Image Correlation (DIC). A wider TRC external reinforcement retrains the high initial stiffness up to a higher load and reduces the crack widths in comparison with the CFRP solution, designed to meet an equal failure load. These advantages can be attributed to the crack bridging capacity of the external reinforcement.