• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.677-684
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• 2007

This study investigates the failure mechanism of RC beams strengthened with GFRP (glass fiber reinforced polymer) sheets. After analyzing failure mechanisms, the various methods to prevent the debonding failures, such as increasing bonded length of GFRP sheets, U-shape wrappings and epoxy shear keys are examined. The bonded length of GFRP sheets are calculated based on the assumed bond strengths of epoxy resin. The U-shape wrappings are either adopted at the end or center of the CFRP sheets bonded to the beam soft. The epoxy shear keys are embedded to the beam soft to provide sufficient bond strength. The end U-wrappings and the center U-wrappings are conventional, while epoxy shear keys are new details developed in this study. A total six half-scale RC beams have been constructed and tested to investigate the effectiveness of each methods to prevent debonding failure of GFRP sheets. From the experimental results, it was found that increasing bonded length or end U-wrappings do not prevent debonding failure. On the other hand, the beams with center U-wrappings and shear keys reached an ultimate state with their sufficient performance. The center U-wrappings tended to control debonding of the longitudinal GFRP sheets because the growth of the longitudinal cracks along the edges of the composites was delayed. In the case of shear keys, it was sufficient to prevent debonding and the beam was failed by GFRP sheets rupture.