Flexural design of steel or FRP plated RC beams

In recent publications by the second author and his associates, a semi-empirical model (the tooth theory) was developed for designing against the potentially dangerous (largely brittle) premature plate peeling failure of reinforced concrete (RC) beams strengthened in flexure with externally bonded steel or fibre-reinforced plastic (FRP) plates. Although previously backed by an extensive set of experimental data relating to 111 steel and 58 FRP plated beams, the original tooth model suffered from being computer-based, involving certain iterative procedures. The present paper reports the salient features of a simplified procedure, enjoying largely similar accuracy to the iterative method. The output of this simplified method is presently backed by test data relating to 317 steel and/or FRP plated RC beams with widely different beam design parameters. It is amenable to simple hand calculations, using a pocket calculator, hence of value to busy practicing engineers.