Fabio Durante

Debonding of Frp Ebr: from Testing to Design: Effective Methods to Predict the Premature Failure of Concrete Reinforced with Frp Fabio Durante

External bonding of fibre reinforced plastic (FRP) strips to reinforced concrete (RC) beams has been widely accepted as an effective method for strengthening. The ultimate flexural strength of strengthened RC beams can be improved significantly, but it is often impaired by premature failure modes, such as concrete cover separation. Several models have been proposed dealing with this issue. The aim of this study is to assess the performance of the existing models with experimental data gathered from the published literature. Moreover, this work presents a study on the bond strength using several types of test methods. Experimental data from literature used to assess the performance of the several test methods. Furthermore, ABAQUS software used to model the test methods in order to understand the behavior of failure and investigate the stresses in concrete and in FRP plate. The main aim of this dissertation is to identify which of the available test methods better represents a real situation and can thus yield more representative data than can be used to effectively calibrate the fracture energy parameters.