Experimental and numerical studies on compressive behaviour of CFRP wrapped cylindrical concrete specimens subjected to different pre-loading conditions

Abstract

Numerous concrete structures have reached the end of their service life, either due to deterioration of the concrete caused by environmental factors or due to being functionally obsolete. Most of them are in serious need for restoration, retrofitting and rehabilitation. Carbon fibre reinforced polymer sheets are well suited for this because of their high strength to weight ratio, good fatigue properties and excellent resistance to corrosion. Their application has been rapidly growing in the civil engineering field and is becoming a promising solution for strengthening the deteriorated structures. Since CFRPs are easy to apply, they minimize labour costs and leads to significant savings in the overall costs of the project. In the present study, concrete specimens were damaged to a different extent by subjecting it to uniaxial compression followed by wrapping with CFRP sheets. Then, the effects of CFRP wrapping on the strength of pre-damaged concrete specimens are studied experimentally. Thereby the behaviour of normal concrete and CFRP wrapped concrete specimens are studied. The experimental results obtained are compared with the numerical results obtained using ABAQUS software. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.