Shear strengthening of full-scale RC T-beams with CFRP sheets

Many research studies have been conducted to investigate the behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) beams strengthened in shear with externally bonded fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) composite materials over the past two decades. As a result, analytical models and design equations are available in the form of code/guidelines/specifications in the United States and other countries. However, most of the existing studies were conducted on small-scale specimens. Thus, analytical models and design equations developed from those studies may not be able to predict the shear capacity of large-scale RC beams strengthened in shear with externally bonded FRPs. This study was, therefore, performed to evaluate the performance of existing analytical models and design equations with the test results from eight full-scale RC T-beams as well as the experimental database consisting of 375 test results obtained from existing literature. The results of the full-scale tests conducted in this study indicated that FRP shear strengthening on full-scale RC beams is as effective as that observed on small-scale RC beams. The performance of the analytical models considering the effective strain concept appeared to be more reliable to predict the shear strength for both small- and large-scale beams than the ones considering non-uniform distribution of strains in FRP.