Sensitivities of Strength and Ductility of Plated Reinforced Concrete Sections to Preexisting Strains

Abstract

Existing reinforced concrete (RC) beams are commonly enhanced in flexure by bonding steel or fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) plates to their tension faces. At the time of plating, preexisting loads, such as dead loads, are present on the beams. Although these loads clearly do not induce strains in the plates, flexural capacity design calculations for plated beams using RC theory tacitly incorporate the corresponding fictitious preexisting strains in the plates. If the plates are elastic at section flexural failure, as