• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.181-192
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• 2007

The purpose of this study is to analyse and compare experimentally flexural behavior of RC beams strengthened with CFRP plates by different methods, and finally suggest the evaluation equations of flexural capacity of RC beams with the aim of application of prestressed CFRP strengthening. The experimental parameters are compressive strength, reinforcement ratio, prestressing level and strengthening methods. The non-prestressed specimens failed on account of separation of the plates from the beams due to premature de-bonding, while most of the prestressed specimens failed due to CFRP plate fracture. The evaluation equations of flexural capacity of RC beams is suggested and these equations have a good reliability in predicting flexural strength of RC beams.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.1275-1303
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• 2016

Steel plates and carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) laminates or plates bonded to concrete substrates have been widely used for concrete strengthening. However, this technique cause plate debonding, which makes the strengthening system inefficient. The main objective of this study is to enhance the bond strength of externally bonded steel plates and CFRP laminates to the concrete surface by proposing new embedded adhesive and steel connectors. The effects of these new embedded connectors were investigated through the tests on 36 prism specimens. Parameters such as interfacial shear stress, fracture energy and the maximum strains in plates were also determined in this study and compared with the maximum value of debonding stresses using a relevant failure criterion by means of pullout test. The study indicates that the interfacial bond strength between the externally bonded plates and concrete can be increased remarkably by using these connectors. The investigation verifies that steel connectors increase the shear bond strength by 48% compared to 38% for the adhesive connectors. Thus, steel connectors are more effective than adhesive connectors in increasing shear bond strength. Results also show that the use of double connectors significantly increases interfacial shear stress and decrease debonding failure. Finally, a new proposed formula is modified to predict the maximum bond strength of steel plates and CFRP laminates adhesively glued to concrete in the presence of the embedded connectors.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.55-62
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• 2012

Steel plate or FRP materials have been typically used for the seismic retrofit of civil infrastructures. In order to overcome the limitation of each retrofitting material, a composite material, which takes advantages from both metal and fiber polymer materials, has been developed. In the study herein, the composite retrofitting material consists of metal part(steel or aluminum) and FRP sheet part(glass or carbon fiber). The metal part can enhance the ductility and the FRP part the ultimate strength. As a preliminary study to investigate the fundamental mechanical characteristics of the metal-FRP laminated composite material this study performed the flexural fracture test with various experimental variables including the number, the angle and the combination of FRP laminates. From the aluminum-FRP composite tests no great increase in flexural strength and flexural toughness were observed. However, flexural toughness of steel-FRP laminate composite was increased so that its behavior can be considered in the retrofit design. In addition, the angle and the kind of fibers should be carefully considered in conjunction with the expected loading conditions.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.54-63
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• 2011

Steel plate or FRP materials have been typically used for the seismic retrofit of civil infrastructures. In order to overcome the limitation of each retrofitting material, a composite material, which takes advantages from both metal and fiber polymer materials, has been developed. In the study herein, the composite retrofitting material consists of metal part(steel or aluminum) and FRP sheet part(glass or carbon fiber). The metal part can enhance the ductility and the FRP part the ultimate strength. As a preliminary study to investigate the fundamental mechanical characteristics of the metal-FRP laminated composite material this study performed the tensile test with various experimental variables including the number, the angle and the combination of FRP laminates. From the test results, both aluminum and steel-FRP laminate composite material showed increased fracture toughness. However, the angle and the kind of fibers should be carefully considered in conjunction with the expected loading conditions. In general, steel-FRP laminate composite showed better tensile performance in regards to the seismic retrofit purposes.

• Advances in Computational Design
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.173-188
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• 2022

In modern buildings, glass is considered a structurally unsafe material due to its brittleness and unpredictable failure behavior. The possible use of structural glass elements (i.e., floors, beams and columns) is generally prevented by its poor tensile strength and a frequent occurrence of brittle failures. In this study an innovative modelling based on an equivalent thickness concept of laminated glass beam reinforced with FRP (Fiber Reinforced Polymer) composite material and of glass plates punched is presented. In particular, the novel numerical modelling applied to an embedding Carbon FRP-rod in the interlayer of a laminated structural glass beam is considered in order to increase both its failure strength, together with its post-failure strength and ductility. The proposed equivalent modelling of different specimens enables us to carefully evaluate the effects of this reinforcement. Both the responses of the reinforced beam and un-reinforced one are evaluated, and the corresponding results are compared and discussed. A novel equivalent modelling for reinforced glass beams using FRP composites is presented for FEM analyses in modern material components and proved estimations of the expected performance are provided. Moreover, the new suggested numerical analysis is also applied to laminated glass plates with wide holes at both ends for the technological reasons necessary to connect a glass beam to a structure. Obtained results are compared with an integer specimen. Experimental considerations are reported.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.84 no.3
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• pp.375-391
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• 2022

This paper discussed and analyzed the interfacial stress distribution characteristic of adjacent cracks in Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) plate strengthened concrete slabs. One un-strengthened concrete test beam and four CFRP plate-strengthened concrete test beams were designed to carry out four-point flexural tests. The test data shows that the interfacial shear stress between the interface of CFRP plate and concrete can effectively reduce the crack shrinkage of the tensile concrete and reduces the width of crack. The maximum main crack flexural height in pure bending section of the strengthened specimen is smaller than that of the un-strengthened specimen, the CFRP plate improves the rigidity of specimens without brittle failure. The average ultimate bearing capacity of the CFRP-strengthened specimens was increased by 64.3% compared to that without CFRP-strengthen. This indicites that CFRP enhancement measures can effectively improve the ultimate bearing capacity and delay the occurrence of debonding damage. Based on the derivation of mechanical analysis model, the calculation formula of interfacial shear stress between adjacent cracks is proposed. The distributions characteristics of interfacial shear stress between certain crack widths were given. In the intermediate cracking region of pure bending sections, the length of the interfacial softening near the mid-span cracking position gradually increases as the load increases. The CFRP-concrete interface debonding capacity with the larger adjacent crack spacing is lower than that with the smaller adjacent crack spacing. The theoretical calculation results of interfacial bonding shear stress between adjacent cracks have good agreement with the experimental results. The interfacial debonding failure between adjacent cracks in the intermediate cracking region was mainly caused by the root of the main crack. The larger the spacing between adjacent cracks exists, the easier the interfacial debonding failure occurs.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.641-648
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• 2009

Concrete structures become more common in railway systems with an advancement of high speed train technologies. As the service life of concrete structures increases, structural strengthening for concrete structures may be necessary. There are several typical strengthening techniques using steel plate and fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) materials, which have their own inherent shortcomings. In order to enhance greater durability and resistance to fire and other environmental attacks, basalt fiber material attracts engineer's attention due to its characteristics. This study investigates bonding performance of basalt fiber sheet as a structural strengthening material. Experimental variables include bond width, length and number of layer. From the bonding tests, there were three different types of bonding failure modes: debonding, rupture and rip-off. Among the variables, bond width indicated more significant effect on bonding characteristics. In addition the bond length did not contribute to bond strength in proportion to the bond length. Hence this study evaluated effective bond length and effective bond strength. The effective bond strength was compared to those suggested by other researches which used different types of FRP strengthening materials such as carbon FRP.

• Journal of Aerospace System Engineering
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.32-40
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• 2018

An impact localization for a carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) composite plate was performed using the multiplexed fiber bragg grating (FBG) sensors and the error-outlier based impact localization algorithm. We found that the optimal impact localization with the maximum error of 31.82 mm and the averaged error of 6.31 mm are obtained when the error threshold (ET) and constant level (CL) are 0.3 nm and 110, respectively. Moreover, the detailed process of impact localization under certain optimal parameters and the relevant results were thoroughly investigated. We conclude that the multiplexed FBG sensors and the error-outlier based impact localization algorithm are suitable for an impact localization on composite structures, and expect that they can be utilized for various structural health monitoring (SHM) in the future.

• International journal of steel structures
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.1284-1296
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• 2018

Carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP), plates bonding repair method is one of the simple repair methods for cracked steel structures. In this study, the influence of width of CFRP plates on bending fatigue life of out-of-plane gusset joint strengthened with CFRP plates was investigated from the experimental and numerical point of view. In the bending fatigue test of cracked out-of-plane gusset joint strengthened with CFRP plates, the effect of width of CFRP plates on crack growth life was clarified experimentally. Namely, it was revealed that the crack growth life becomes larger with increasing the width of CFRP plates. In the numerical approach, the stress intensity factor (SIF) at the surface point of a semi-elliptical surface crack was estimated based on the linear fracture mechanics. Furthermore, the extended fatigue life of cracked out-of-plane gusset joint strengthened with CFRP plates was evaluated by using the estimated SIF at the surface point and the empirical formula of the aspect ratio of semi-elliptical crack. As the results of numerical analysis, the estimated fatigue life of the specimen strengthened with CFRP plates showed the good agreement with the test results.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.171-178
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• 2019

Fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) composites have proved to be reliable as strengthening materials. Most of existing studies used single types of FRP composites. Therefore, in this experimental study, carbon FRP sheet, aramid FRP sheet, and hybrid FRP plate including glass fibers were fabricated, and the effect of pre-stressed FRP composites on flexural strengthening of reinforced concrete (RC) beams was investigated. In total, eight RC beam specimens were fabricated, including one control beam (specimen N) without FRP composites and seven FRP-strengthened beams. The main parameters were type of FRP composite, the number of anchors used for pre-stressing, and thickness of FRP plates. As a result, the beam strengthened with pre-stressed FRP plate showed superior performance to the non-strengthened one in terms of initial strength, strength and stiffness at yielding, and ultimate strength. As the number of anchors and thickness of FRP plate (i.e., amount of FRP plates) increased, the strengthening effect increased as well. When hybrid FRP plates were pre-stressed, the strengthening effect was higher in comparison with pre-stressed single type FRP plate.