Retrofitting of defected reinforced-concrete cantilever slabs using different techniques

This paper presents the experimental findings for different strengthening techniques applied on defected reinforced-concrete cantilever slabs to restore lost flexural capacities owing to insufficient bond length of the main tensile steel. The restoration technique was based on compensation of the main tensile steel by near-surface mounted steel bars, externally bonded steel plates or externally bonded carbon fibre-reinforced polymer sheets. In addition, new hybrid techniques are presented, which merge the traditional techniques with a 20 mm thick ultra-high-performance strain-hardening cementitious composites (UHP-SHCC) layer. It was found that the strengthening technique based on the embedded steel bars on the UHP-SHCC overlay enabled the strengthened slab to restore its lost capacity and outperformed it by about 5% compared to that of the properly detailed slab. Nevertheless, this restoration was at the expense of the exhibited ductility. Conversely, the strengthening technique based on the application of externally bonded steel plates on a transition layer of the UHP-SHCC material enabled the strengthened slab to restore the lost capacity by about 96% as well as to outperform its ductility by more than 29% compared to those of the properly detailed slab.