Shear Strengthening of Reinforced Concrete- Walls with Externally Bonded FRP Fabrics

Abstract

During recent seismic events, it has become evident that thin reinforced concrete walls (TRCW) can present failures due to the lack of confinement and boundary elements because of their thickness, which only allows a reinforcing steel grid. These failures are characterized by out-of-plane instabilities, flexural failures and shear failures. The last ones, brittle and sudden failures that could seriously compromise the stability of the structure. FRP reinforcements have shown in research around the world to have a great performance in different structural elements under different loads. This document presents the results of a research project in which the behavior of the shear strengthening of thin reinforced concrete walls using different external FRP fabrics schemes and systems was evaluated, analyzing 10 specimens; 5 low concrete strength resistance and 5 high resistance, with dimensions of 0.1 x 1.3 x 2.6 m (4 x 52 x 102 in) with shear reinforcement deficiency reinforced with 2 carbon fibers (CFRP) and 1 glass fiber (GFRP). The failure mode, the hysteretic response, the stiffness degradation, and the energy dissipation capacity were evaluated, showing significant improvements in the shear capacity for each specimen evaluated as well as differences in terms of the equations taken as a basis provided by the ACI 440.2 R - 17 for the calculation of the external reinforcement contribution and the experimental load capacity of each specimen.