Effects of concrete heterogeneity on FRP-concrete bond behaviour: Experimental and mesoscale numerical studies

Extensive experimental and numerical studies have been conducted to understand the bond behaviour of FRPconcrete interfaces with the assumption of homogenous materials. This study is aimed at a better understanding of the effects of concrete heterogeneity on the FRP-concrete bond behaviour, by a combination of experiments and mesoscale numerical modelling. FRP-concrete and FRP-mortar bonded joints were tested using a four-point bending setup. The crack initiation and propagation process with interfacial debonding until failure was accurately captured by the digital image correlation (DIC) technique. The results show that the presence of coarse aggregates in the FRP-concrete joints leads to 19% higher bond strength, but much higher variations in the bond strength and the strain distribution across the width of FRP sheets, than the FRP-mortar joints. Monte Carlo simulations of mesoscale finite element models with random distribution of polygonal aggregates were then carried out for the FRP-concrete bond tests. It is found that the distribution of coarse aggregates significantly affects the overall force-deflection responses as well as the simulated fracture processes and final failure modes that are highly comparable with the DIC observations.