TRC or CFRP strengthening for reinforced concrete beams: an experimental study of the cracking behaviour

Cement-based composites are emerging as strengthening and repair materials for concrete structures,
because of their advantages related to ?re safety and their relatively low cost. To be able to compete with
the existing Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) solutions, the cement matrix must be reinforced
with textiles in high ?bre volume fractions. Extensive experimental veri?cation of the contribution of
these Textile Reinforced Cements (TRC) as external reinforcement with regard to the load bearing and
cracking behaviour of reinforced concrete beams is still necessary. This paper compares the existing CFRP
and TRC solutions with a strong focus on the cracking behaviour by performing seventeen bending
experiments monitored with Digital Image Correlation (DIC). It shows that the TRC-reinforced beams
exhibit a similar cracking behaviour to the CFRP-reinforced beams. Moreover, precracking of the concrete
beams before the application of the external reinforcement reduces only the initial high stiffness, but
does not in?uence the cracking behaviour, failure mode or ultimate load. These test results indicate
the relevance of non-precracked tests that have been performed in the past.

Publication year:2014

Keywords:external reinforcement, textiles reinforced cement composites, CFRP, crack, digital image correlation (DIC), bending

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