Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Q. L. MA 1 X. Z. LU 1 L. P. YE 1 J. B. ZHUANG 1
1
Department of Civil Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, PR China, 100084
Keywords: carbon fiber reinforced polymer sheets, reinforced concrete beam, strengthening, crack
width.
1 INTRODUCTION
Strengthening concrete beams with externally bonded CFRP sheets is widely used in various
applications nowadays. Besides the obvious enhancement of strength (both flexural and shear) [1], it
also can effectively reduce the crack width of beams and improve the service performance [2-5]. The
flexural strength of strengthened RC beams is now studied adequately while the tests and
computational methods on crack width are quite limited. Many existing tests indicate that the
distributing characteristics of cracks of CFRP sheet strengthened beams are different from ordinary
beams. The cracks in strengthened beams could be classified into three types illuminated as follows:
(1) Main cracks caused by flexural stress. When cracking load is reached, the first group of cracks
appears which is labeled as group (a), and the succeeding cracks which appear between cracks
of group (a) with external load increasing are labeled as group (b). As shown in Fig.1, these
cracks may grow higher with external load increasing and their distribution depends on the
synthetical bonding performance of reinforcement, CFRP sheets and concrete.
(2) Subordinate cracks due to bond between steel reinforcement and concrete. The local bonding
between steel and concrete will finally lead to appearance of local cracks surrounding the steel
bars and these cracks propagate to the surface of the beam which are labeled as group (c) in Fig.
1. The lengths of these cracks are relatively short due to the local bond effect.
(3) Subordinate cracks due to bond between CFRP and concrete. The opening-up of flexural cracks
will also leads to the local peel off in the interface between CFRP sheets and concrete. These
cracks are labeled as group (d) in Fig. 1. Furthermore, some of these cracks may intersect with
main cracks which will cause looseness of concrete. When the amount of CFRP sheets is very
large, all these cracks will tend to parallel to reinforcement [6-12].
Lots of existing tests indicate that strengthening with externally bonded CFRP sheets will reduce
the crack width of beams effectively and the spaces between cracks reduce as well. But the restraint
of CFRP sheets to the flexural cracks is limited near to the bottom surface of the beam. So the cracks
of strengthened beams are usually correspondingly narrow at the two ends and wider in the middle.
Since the worst result of cracking is corrosion of steel reinforcement, hence, the crack width near
tensile longitudinal bars of reinforcement is studied.
2 EXPERIMENTAL DATABASE
Detailed records about cracks of beams strengthened with CFRP sheets are quite limited. In this
research, 15 records [6~9, 11, 12] are collected including the test done by the authors [12], which are all
shown in Table 1.
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The stresses of steel reinforcement and CFRP in first cracked section (section 1) are labeled as
σs1, σf1. Correspondingly, the tensile stresses of concrete, steel reinforcement and CFRP in adjacent
section (section 2) are labeled as ft, σs2, σf2, respectively. The average bonding stress between
concrete and longitudinal bars is τs, and the average bonding stress between concrete and CFRP
sheets is τf. The average flexural crack space is lmf. Then, the balance condition between section 1
and section 2 is written as follows:
σ s1 As + σ f1 Af = σ s2 As + σ f2 Af + f t Ac (1)
Separating longitudinal steel bars as an independent part, a balance equation is written as
(σ s1 − σ s2 ) As = τ sulmf (2)
For CFRP sheets, a similar equation is given by
(σ f1 − σ f2 ) Af = τ f bf lmf (3)
where u is the perimeter of longitudinal bar and bf is the bonding width of CFRP sheets. From
equations(1),(2) and (3), the following equation is obtained:
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FRPRCS-8 University of Patras, Patras, Greece, July 16-18, 2007
⎡ d ⎤
⎢ τf −τ s ⎥
A + Af Af 4tf
f t Ac = 4τ s ( s )lmf ⎢1 + ( )⎥ (4)
d ⎢ As + Af τs ⎥
⎢⎣ ⎥⎦
d
τf −τ s
Af 4tf
Substituting lm = [1 + ( )]lmf into Eq (4) yields
As + Af τs
f t Ac 1 f t Ac d 1 ft d
lm = = =
A + Af
) 4 τ s As + Af 4 τ s ρ f
(5)
4τ s ( s
d
where ρf is synthetical effective steel ratio of reinforcement, ρf =(As+Af)/Ac and d is the diameter of
longitudinal steel bar (mm).
Equation (5) has the similar form as the expression of average crack space of ordinary reinforced
concrete members in Chinese code for design of concrete structures [15], so the parameter lm could be
calculated following the similar way of the Code [15], which is written as
d
lm = 1.9c + 0.08 (6)
ρ te
where c is the thickness of cover layer to reinforcement; ρte is the effective tensile steel ratio of
reinforcement in ordinary RC beams. Furthermore, for strengthened beams with CFRP sheets,
because the elastic modulus of CFRP is quite close to steel, ρte is still suggested to be calculated by
equation for ordinary RC beams while the area of tensile steel reinforcement As in the original equation
is substituted by (As+Af), therefore,
As + Af
ρ te = (7)
0.5bh + (bf − b)hf
where b is sectional width, bf, hf are width and height of the tensile flange, respectively. According to
Lu’s research [14], the bonding strength τf between CFRP sheets and concrete is proportional to the
tensile strength of concrete. So by introducing strengthening influence factor β and bonding influence
factor kf, which yields:
d
τf −τ s
Af 4tf Af d (8)
β= ( )= (kf − 1)
As + Af τs As + Af tf
where kf = τ f / 4τ s .Therefore, the average crack space of CFRP sheets reinforced beams lmf and the
average crack space of ordinary RC beams lm have the relationship as follows:
lm
lmf = (9)
1+ β
where β is related to the tensile strength of concrete and the area ratio between CFRP sheets and
steel bars. By fitting the test results, the parameter lmf can be got. And from equation (6), lm also can
be calculated. With lmf and lm, the value of kf can be got from equation (8). The value of kf for each
specimen in Table 1 is shown in Table 2. Because the factors that may influence the average CFRP-
concrete bond stress are more than concrete tensile strength itself, for instance, the slippage of steel
bars and CFRP sheets, and Af/As also affect the final result, so the regressed kf is not a constant, but
can be expressed as:
kf = 0.24 Af / As (10)
The results of crack spaces of strengthened beams computed by equation (6)~(10) and
corresponding test results are all listed in Table 3. The average ratio between calculated results and
experimental results shown in Table 3a is 1.05 and the standard deviation is 0.41. In Table 3b, though
the test results are given by ranges, it is shown that the computed results and experimental results
agree well except LS2S in Ref [12] whose testing result is larger than calculation due to the lack of
web steel reinforcement.
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FRPRCS-8 University of Patras, Patras, Greece, July 16-18, 2007
Table 3a Comparison of crack spaces with lm in Chinese code (Specimen Group 1).
Table 3b Comparison of crack spaces with lm in Chinese code (Specimen Group 2).
Ref
Ref [8] Ref [11]
Specimen [12]
A1 A2 A3 BEAM2 BEAM3 BEAM4 LS2S
75- 75- 75- 115-
Test 60~90 90~110 30~60
112 112 112 200
Calculation 126.47 120.27 114.79 79.91 81.93 60.45 176.06
The above discussion is based on the model for lm proposed in Chinese Design Code. This model
is relatively simple but maybe not precise enough. Then, another important model for lm proposed by
Ding [13] is also discussed here which is written as
7 d
lm = (1 + 2γ 1 + 0.4γ 1' ) (for deformed steel bars) (11a)
8 ρf
10 d
lm = (1 + 2γ 1 + 0.4γ 1' ) (for plain steel bars) (11b)
8 ρf
where γ1 is enhancing factor of tensile flange, γ 1 = (bf − b)hf / bh ; γ 1 ' is enhancing factor of
compressive flange γ 1 ' = (bf '−b)hf ' / bh ; ρf is synthetical ratio of steel reinforcement,
ρf = ( As + Af ) / bh0 ; d is diameter of longitudinal bar. Similarly, use lmf from tests and lm from
equation (11), a statistical value of β is obtained, and then kf is computed by equation (8). All the
results are shown in Table 2. According to the testing results, kf is fitted as
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FRPRCS-8 University of Patras, Patras, Greece, July 16-18, 2007
Table 4a Comparison of crack spaces with lm proposed by Ding[13] (Specimen Group 1).
Table 4b Comparison of crack spaces with lm proposed by Ding[13] (Specimen Group 2).
Ref
Ref [8] Ref [11]
Specimen [12]
A1 A2 A3 BEAM2 BEAM3 BEAM4 LS2S
75- 75- 75- 115-
Test 60~90 90~110 30~60
112 112 112 200
Calculation 92.12 87.84 84.06 73.22 73.22 65.00 99.52
4 CRACK WIDTH
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ft
ψ = 1.1 − 0.65
Af (20)
σ s ρ te (1 + 0.415 )
As + Af
Furthermore, a crack propagation coefficient is needed in the computation of maximum crack
width of strengthened beam with CFRP sheets in service stage under short-term loading which is
considered to be 1.66 according to statistical results. So the final expression of maximum crack width
of CFRP sheets strengthened beams is
σs
ωmax = αψ lmf (21)
Es
where α is load type coefficient which is 0.85×1.66=1.41 according to the Chinese code[15] for ordinary
RC flexural members.
Different results of maximum crack width will be computed by equation (21) with different
expressions of lm and kf. Herein, all the calculated results are compared with test results as follows:
(1) While lm, kf are computed by equation (6) and equation (10) respectively, calculated results and
test results of maximum crack width are shown in Table 5. The average ratio of test results to
computed results is 0.99 and the standard deviation is 0.28 which are close to the results of the
ordinary beams comparatively.
(2) While lm, kf are computed by equation (11) and equation (12) respectively, calculated results and
test results of maximum crack width are shown in Table 6. The column of ω’/ω [1] indicates that all
the computed results are smaller than tests if α takes 1.41. By analyzing the values of ω’/ω[1],
statistically α is modified to be 2.0. All the results with α=2.0 are shown in column ω’/ω [2], whose
average ratio of test results to computed results is 0.95, and the standard deviation is 0.16 which
is much smaller than former expression.
Table 5 Comparison of crack width of testing result and computed results using eqns (6) and (10).
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Table 6 Comparison of crack width of testing result and computed results using eqns (11) and (12).
Ref [6] 38.81 0.69 236.61 0.687 0.084 0.138 1.57 1.10
73.43
(BM0) 45.86 0.82 279.59 0.751 0.109 0.15 1.34 0.94
52.92 0.95 322.63 0.797 0.133 0.192 1.40 0.98
153 0.51 227.78 0.594 0.113 0.217 1.92 1.34
178.5 0.60 265.74 0.667 0.148 0.217 1.46 1.03
Ref [12]
204 0.68 303.71 118.6 0.721 0.183 0.217 1.19 0.83
(CB1)
229.5 0.77 341.67 0.763 0.218 0.25 1.15 0.80
306 1.02 450.16 0.847 0.323 0.407 1.47 1.03
48 0.5 201.03 0.471 0.066 0.1 1.50 1.05
54 0.57 226.16 0.541 0.086 0.11 1.28 0.90
5 CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, crack width of reinforced concrete beams strengthened with CFRP sheets is studied
based on the traditional crack theory of RC beams. The influence of CFRP sheets on crack space,
tensile stress of longitudinal steel reinforcement at the cracked section and its non-uniform distribution
factor are analyzed, and two methods for crack widths for CFRP sheets strengthened beams are
proposed which give good prediction. The first method follows the way suggested in the Chinese code
[15]
which could be easily used in practice, and the second method proposed in this paper is improved
to give a more accurate prediction with less standard deviation. Furthermore, although the crack width
is quite sensitive to the secondary loading in practical application, it is not concerned in this research.
The tests on secondary loading are quite limited and the crack width records with secondary loading
are fewer, therefore, further work in this field still need to be proceeded.
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FRPRCS-8 University of Patras, Patras, Greece, July 16-18, 2007
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