Flexural behavior of strengthened concrete beams with multiple retrofitting systems

Due to material deterioration, structure age, changes in building function, fault design, and decreased structural reliability brought on by natural catastrophes, it may require to strengthening the reinforced concrete (RC) beams. The entire carbon footprint is increased by the usage of building materials like cement. Therefore, restoring/improving their overall functionality may be accomplished more sustainably by strengthening and repairing damaged members. In this study, a series of RC beams were tested in three-point bending to determine the ability of various strengthening techniques to improve the beams' flexural capacity. Three strengthening techniques were proposed: External bonding with glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) laminates, near-surface mounted (NSM), and U-jacket. The experimental study compared the various strengthening methods in terms of ultimate loads, crack loads, maximum deflections, gains in ductility, and energy absorption. The finite element program (ABAQUS) was used for the numerical computations because it is capable of properly simulating experimental research on the flexural behaviour of reinforced concrete beams. Compared to all techniques, the strengthening using GFRP in the different techniques (GFRP laminate, NSM, and U-jacket) propagation of cracks before failure occurred in the RC beam. The sample B3-St. plate-NSM, which used the NSM technique, had the highest peak load of 77.2 MPa compared to all samples and a 36.64% increase over the control sample B0-Control. Moreover, the sample B3-St. Plate-NSM has improved stiffness which contributed to reducing the deflection at peak load by 21.12% than the control sample. The strengthening system using steel plate as NSM showed the lowest cost ($/m`) among the other strengthening systems. The specimen B1-GFRP, which used the GFRP technique, had the highest toughness of 1099.2 kN.mm by an increase of 40.25% over the control sample. Finally, the results obtained by using numerical FE models show good agreement with the experimental results.