Impact of CFRP partial bonding on the behaviour of short reinforced concrete wall under monotonic lateral loading

The present research work highlights the significance of partially bonding Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer to RC walls to attain reasonable strength and drift without deteriorating wall dissipation capacity. It is worth to mention that no strengthening was applied at the wall edges as in field the wall edges are unexposed as they are mostly connected to columns or walls. Two RC short walls were designed under-reinforced in term of shear and tested to failure under quasi static monotonic lateral loading. One out of these two was strengthened externally with Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymers (CFRP). The strengthening arrangement consisted of partial bonding of CFRP strips to the wall panel and mesh anchors installation at the wall foundation joint. The reported test results clearly show that the adopted strengthening technique can improve wall performance in terms of strength and deformability with negligible variation in RC wall dissipation capacity. The test result analysis discussion includes cracking pattern, load displacement, deflected shapes, strain distribution in CFRP, and deformability index. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.