Bending Capacity of Reinforced Concrete Slabs Strengthened with Textile Reinforced Concrete

Bending Capacity of Reinforced Concrete Slabs Strengthened with Textile Reinforced Concrete Textile Reinforced Concrete (TRC) is a very effective method to strengthen reinforced concrete constructions. The SFB 528 of the TU Dresden has been carrying out vast research concerning the use of TRC for a subsequent bending strengthening of existing concrete and reinforced concrete components. As a rule the experiments TRC strengthened small format reinforced concrete slabs with span widths of 1.60 m and thicknesses of 0.10 m were used. Parallel to these tests calculation models were developed enabling a prediction of the maximum bending load carrying capacity of the strengthened units among others. The paper describes the experimental and theoretical research for checking the transferability of the results gained until now onto large-size reinforced concrete slabs with span widths of 6.75 m and thicknesses of 0.23 m. Through the use of high performance textile reinforcements based on carbon Heavy-Tow-Yarns very high reinforcement degrees were realized. The results show significant increases of the load carrying capacity compared to the unstrengthened reference slabs. Thus the safe use of bending strengthening out of TRC for components with large span widths and high reinforcement degrees could be proven. At the same time we were able to demonstrate considerably lower deflection with growing reinforcement degrees. The experimentally determined load bearing capacity can be well comprehended with the introduced calculation models of the bending measurement of TRC strengthened reinforced concrete slabs.