Experimental Research on Shear Property of Steel Bar/Wire Mesh Mortar Strengthening Concrete Beams

In order to enhance the shear capacity of reinforced concrete (RC) beams more efficiently, a thought to strengthen concrete beams by using steel bar/wire mesh mortar was proposed. A comparison experiment study on shear behavior of two kinds of strengthening RC beams(namely steel bar mat(S)mortar strengthening, and steel bar / wire mesh(SW) mortar strengthening) was carried out. The experimental results show that SW strengthening can keep the advantages of a better dispersion of reinforcement due to the addition of wire mesh, leading to a much higher initial diagonal crack load, and a better control to the crack propagation of the strengthened beams. The initial diagonal cracking load and the shear capacity of SW strengthened beams are 83% and more than 30% higher than those of S strengthened beams respectively, while the reinforcement ratio of the formers is only 22% higher than that of the laters. The working mechanism of SM mortar strengthening was discussed.