Rehabilitation of thin walled steel beams using CFRP fabric

摘要

This paper discusses the structural behaviour of damaged steel I-beams rehabilitated using carbon fibre reinforced polymers (CFRP) fabric. The damage was simulated by thinning the bottom flange of the steel beams. A total of eight beams were tested under four-point bending load. The study found that both yield and ultimate load capacities of a damaged steel beam can be fully restored to the level of undamaged beam if adequate number of CFRP fabric layers is used and the debonding failure is avoided. The structural behaviour of rehabilitated steel beams was successfully modeled using commercially available finite element software and a good correlation was obtained between the finite element output and the lab specimen's results.