Effect of Concrete Composition on FRP/Concrete Bond Capacity

Abstract

External bonding of fiber-reinforced plastics (FRP) to concrete members has been established as an efficient and effective method for structural strengthening and retrofitting. Direct shear test is often employed to study the crack-induced debonding failure in reinforced concrete members flexurally strengthened with FRP composites. In many existing models, the bond capacity (which defines ultimate load capacity of the specimen in the direct shear test) is considered to be strongly dependent on the compressive or tensile strength of the concrete. However, since debonding behavior is affected by interfacial friction due to aggregate interlocking within the debonded zone, the concrete composition should also play an important role in determining the bond capacity. In this study, the direct shear test is performed with 10 different compositions of concrete. The test results indicate that the bond capacity has little correlation with either the concrete compressive or splitting tensile strength. On the other hand, the bond capacity is found to have reasonable correlation with the concrete surface tensile strength but correlates very well with the aggregate content. As a geometry independent parameter corresponding to bond capacity, the interfacial fracture energy is empirically proposed to relate to these two parameters. The consideration of aggregate content leads to much better agreement between predicted bond capacity and test result. Hence, the effect of concrete composition on the FRP/concrete bond should be considered in practical design.