“…However, durability of a RC member externally reinforced with FRP depends not only on durability of the individual materials, but also on the capacity of the concrete cover to sustain the bond stresses s b [22][23][24][25]. In fact, on one hand, the FRP-composite material keeps its original strength, elasticity, and toughness [5,13,15,16,[26][27][28]; on the other hand, however, the combination of s b and initial cracks (flaws) in the concrete cover may give rise to slow crack growth up to the critical length, and eventually to debonding of the external reinforcement [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36]. Unfortunately, neither the structural codes nor the structural practice considers explicitly the service failure that is caused by slow crack growth in the concrete cover.…”