• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• 제9권1호
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• pp.29-42
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• 2022

In mountainous areas of China, concrete poles with connectors are widely employed in power transmission due to its convenience of manufacture and transportation. The bearing capacity of the poles must have degenerated over time, and most of the steel connectors have been corroded. Carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) offers a durable, light-weight alternative in strengthening those poles that have served for many years. In this paper, the bearing capacity and failure mechanism of CFRP sheet strengthened existing reinforced concrete poles with corrosion steel connectors were investigated. Four poles were selected to conduct flexural capacity test. Two poles were strengthened by single-layer longitudinal CFRP sheet, one pole was strengthened by double-layer longitudinal CFRP sheets and the last specimen was not strengthened. Results indicate that the failure is mainly bond failure between concrete and the external CFRP sheet, and the specimens fail in a brittle pattern. The cross-sectional strains of specimens approximately follow the plane section assumption in the early stage of loading, but the strain in the tensile zone no longer conforms to this assumption when the load approaches the failure load. Also, bearing capacity and stiffness of the strengthened specimens are much larger than those without CFRP sheet. The bearing capacity, initial stiffness and elastic-plastic stiffness of specimen strengthened by double-layer CFRP are larger than those strengthened by single-layer CFRP. Weighting the cost-effective effect, it is more economical and reasonable to strengthen with single-layer CFRP sheet. The results can provide a reference to the same type of poles for strengthening design.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• 제16권5호
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• pp.481-489
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• 2014

The function of carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) reinforcement in increasing the ductility of reinforced concrete (RC) deep beam is important in such shear-sensitive RC member. This paper aims to investigate the effect of CFRP-strengthening on the energy absorption of RC deep beams. Six ordinary RC deep beams and six CFRP-strengthened RC deep beams with shear span to the effective depth ratio of 0.75, 1.00, 1.25, 1.50, 1.75, and 2.00 were tested till failure in this research. An empirical relationship was established to obtain the energy absorption of CFRP-strengthened RC deep beams. The shear span to the effective depth ratio and growth of energy absorption of CFRP-strengthened deep beam were the significant factors to establish this relationship.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• 제34권1호
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• pp.91-105
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• 2020

Steel-concrete composite beam with profiled steel sheet has gained its popularity in the last two decades. Due to the ageing of these structures, retrofitting in terms of flexural strength is necessary to ensure that the aged structures can carry the increased traffic load throughout their design life. The steel ribs, which presented in the profiled steel deck, limit the use of shear connectors. This leads to a poor degree of composite action between the concrete slab and steel beam compared to the solid slab situation. As a result, the shear connectors that connects the slab and beam will be subjected to higher shear stress which may also require strengthening to increase the load carrying capacity of an existing composite structure. While most of the available studies focus on the strengthening of longitudinal shear and flexural strength separately, the present work investigates the effect of both flexural and longitudinal shear strengthening of steel-concrete composite beam with composite slab in terms of failure modes, ultimate load carrying capacity, ductility, end-slip, strain profile and interface differential strain. The flexural strengthening was conducted using carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) or steel plate on the soffit of the steel I-beam, while longitudinal shear capacity was enhanced using post-installed high strength bolts. Moreover, a combination of both the longitudinal shear and flexural strengthening techniques was also implemented (hybrid strengthening). It is concluded that hybrid strengthening improved the ultimate load carrying capacity and reduce slip and interface differential strain that lead to improved composite action. However, hybrid strengthening resulted in brittle failure mode that decreased ductility of the beam.