Shear strengthening of RC T-beams with externally side bonded GFRP sheet

This article presents an experimental investigation on the performance of 2500 mm long reinforced concrete (RC) T-beams strengthened in shear using epoxy bonded glass fiber fabric. The experimental program consisted of testing of 18 full scale simply supported RC T-beams. Nine beams are used as control beam with three different stirrups spacing without glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) wrap and rest nine beams are strengthened in shear with one, two, and three layers of GFRP sheet on side of the web of the T-beams for each type of stirrup spacing. The objective of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness, shear behavior, the cracking pattern, and modes of failure of strengthened RC T-beams. The experimental result indicates that RC T-beams strengthened in shear with side-bonded GFRP sheet increases the effectiveness by 12.5% to 50%. The theoretical study demonstrated that, when compared with ACI guidelines, the proposed model gives better agreement with the test results available.