Shear Strengthening of RC Beams with EB FRP: Influencing Factors and Conceptual Debonding Model

This paper deals with the shear strengthening of RC beams using externally bonded (EB) fiber-reinforced polymers (FRP). Current code provisions and design guidelines related to shear strengthening of RC beams with FRP are discussed in this paper. The findings of research studies, including recent work, have been collected and analyzed. The parameters that have the greatest influence on the shear behavior of RC members strengthened with EB FRP and the role of these parameters in current design codes are reviewed. This study reveals that the effect of transverse steel on the shear contribution of FRP is important and yet is not considered by any existing codes or guidelines. Therefore, a new design method is proposed to consider the effect of transverse steel in addition to other influencing factors on the shear contribution of FRP (Vf). Separate design equations are proposed for U-wrap and side-bonded FRP configurations. The accuracy of the proposed equations has been verified by predicting the shear strength of experimentally tested RC beams using data collected from the literature. Finally, comparison with current design guidelines has shown that the proposed model achieves a better correlation with experimental results than current design guidelines.