Several studies have been conducted to characterise the static behaviour of structural elements strengthened with composites, but fewer data regarding the fatigue behaviour are available. The main purpose of this paper is to compare the fatigue strength of fibre-reinforced polymers strengthened and plain reinforced concrete beams and to develop an analytical model to predict the fatigue life using data from different experiments. The paper uses data from a larger study undertaken by the authors to investigate the fatigue resistance of reinforced concrete beams strengthened with carbon, glass and aramid composites. The results obtained were combined with data from six other fatigue experiments found in the literature in order to generate a database for adjusting a fatigue model using regression analysis. Although an examination of the database reveals large scatter between fatigue results from different sources, the analysis carried out indicates that the models proposed are similar to other fatigue models found in the literature, but the adjusted model I seems to be more adequate to represent the declivity of the fatigue curve for fibre-reinforced polymers strengthened beams.

No abstract

Fibre‐reinforced polymers (FRP) in the form of externally bonded reinforcement have been used successfully in the rehabilitation of concrete structures. Although considerable data has been produced on the performance of strengthened RC structures, the reliability of strengthened structures can be significantly reduced due to the variability in the FRP properties, especially when the wet layup technique is used. In addition to this, structural engineers are concerned about the durability of FRP‐strengthened structures under extreme loading conditions. Nonetheless, knowledge of the behaviour of strengthened elements under fatigue loading may be important to raise confidence in the strengthening systems. This paper presents the results of an experimental programme developed to investigate the behaviour up to failure of RC beams strengthened with high‐performance carbon and aramid fibre sheets and subjected to static and cyclic loadings in terms of ultimate loads, deflections, cracking behaviour, failure modes and fatigue life by means of loading, crack width and deflection monitoring. Experimental data on fatigue life were used to validate analytical models developed for strengthened and unstrengthened beams.

The use of externally bonded fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) increases the fatigue life of reinforced-concrete beams due to a reduction in the steel stress level when compared with unstrengthened beams. For steel stresses up to 80% of the yield stress, fatigue failure is normally marked by the gradual deterioration of the steel reinforcement, which leads to a stress transfer to the FRP, until failure. Higher steel stresses are associated with FRP debonding, while steel stresses below the fatigue limit will never lead to fatigue failure. In this work, the maximum likelihood estimation method was used to determine stress–cycle curves and confidence intervals. Experimental data with runouts of fatigue tests found in the literature and generated through an experimental programme were used to adjust the fatigue model. The aim was to characterise the large scatter between the results of fatigue tests from different sources. The proposed fatigue model was found to represent accurately the slope of the fatigue curve for FRP-strengthened beams.

The construction methods currently adopted for multi-story concrete buildings resorts the strategy to cast columns and slabs with high and normal compressive concrete strength, respectively. The intersection region affects the load transfer performance of the columns, causing expressive confinement stress in interior columns. However, when the confinement is only provided by two sides, as corner columns, it is not enough to increase the lateral stress. The structural behavior of corner columns, represented by isolated columns, also called sandwich column, is investigated in this paper through numerical nonlinear models. The lateral stresses induced by the uniaxial load applied to the sandwich columns are computed when the influence of concrete strength column-slab ratio, slab thickness and the column width ratio and the biggest dimension of the column's cross section were tested. A set of expressions were proposed to calculate the effective compressive strength of the column based on numerical results. The predicted effective strength has shown a good agreement with experimental results collected from the literature.