Flexure Strength Enhancement of FRP bonded Concrete Beams Subjected to Chemical Solutions

The rapid growing population has resulted into the need of additional capacities of existing infrastructure facilities, commercial buildings etc. Also, the revisions of Codal provisions has made many existing structures fall out of the safety criteria mandated by these provisions. In such scenario these structures are made to withstand greater load than their capacity by means of supplementary systems also known as strengthening schemes. Recently, Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) is in wide use in this particular aspect due to its various advantages. This paper examines its utility to increase flexure capacity of concrete beams with conventional reinforcement. Eighteen numbers of concrete beams with conventional reinforcement are casted with size of 500x100x100 mm3 . These beams are divided into six categories so that each category has three number of beams. The beams are categorized based on the FRP application andpH value curing solution. Two types of curing solutions are used with pH in the range of 4 to 5 and pH in the range 9 to 11. Single layer of Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) fabric sheet is used for flexure strength enhancement. All beams are tested using flexural test till failure. Salient points viz. load and deflection at which first crack is seen and load and corresponding deflection at failure. These points are noted for each beam and average of three beams of a group is presented as final reading. Suitable conclusions are drawn from these test results.