Strengthening of RC two-way slabs with composite materials

This paper deals with the strengthening of reinforced concrete two-way slabs by means of composite material thin plates. The first part deals with an experimental study on reinforced concrete (RC) two -way slabs with carbon fibre-reinforced polymer (CFRP) bands as external reinforcement and internal steel reinforcement. The FRP-strengthened slab test presents a failure mode with debonding of the external FRP bands from the slab. The second part deals with limit analysis modelling. The strengthened slab is designed as a three-layered plate, where the bottom layer is the composite material, the middle layer is the steel and the top layer is the concrete. A simplified laminated plate model is used to describe the behaviour of three-layered plate supported in four sides, which is subjected to a load at the centre. The upper bound theorem of limit analysis is used to approximate the ultimate load capacity and identify the different collapse mechanisms.