Textile-reinforced mortar (TRM) versus fiber-reinforced polymers (FRP) in shear strengthening of concrete beams

TLDR

The study experimentally evaluates shear strengthening of rectangular RC beams using textile‑reinforced mortar (TRM) and fiber‑reinforced polymer (FRP) jackets. Fourteen RC beams, including one unstrengthened control, were tested with TRM or FRP jackets in side‑bonding, U‑wrapping, or full‑wrapping configurations and varying layer counts. TRM jackets are generally less effective than FRP jackets at increasing shear capacity, but their performance improves markedly with U‑wrapping and higher layer numbers.

Abstract

This paper presents an experimental study on shear strengthening of rectangular reinforced concrete (RC) beams with advanced composite materials. Key parameters of this study include: (a) the strengthening system, namely textile-reinforced mortar (TRM) jacketing and fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) jacketing, (b) the strengthening configuration, namely side-bonding, U-wrapping and full-wrapping, and (c) the number of the strengthening layers. In total, 14 RC beams were constructed and tested under bending loading. One of the beams did not receive any strengthening and served as control beam, eight received TRM jacketing, whereas the rest five received FRP jacketing. It is concluded that the TRM is generally less effective than FRP in increasing the shear capacity of concrete, however the effectiveness depends on both the strengthening configuration and the number of layers. U-wrapping strengthening configuration is much more effective than side-bonding in case of TRM jackets and the effectiveness of TRM jackets increases considerably with increasing the number of layers.