Repair of Fire-Damaged Reinforced Concrete Flexural Members: A Review

The mechanical properties of both concrete and steel reinforcement, and the load-bearing capacity of reinforced concrete (RC) structures are well known to be temperature-sensitive, as demonstrated by the severe damage that major fires cause in buildings, followed-in extreme cases-by their collapse. Since in most cases RC structures survive a fire, retrofitting fire-damaged RC members is a hot subject today. In this paper, after a recall on the performance of RC beams and slabs in fire, different repair techniques are considered, among them externally bonded reinforcement, near surface-mounted fiber-reinforced polymers (FRP), bolted side plating, jacketing with high- and ultra-high performance concretes or mortars, and damaged-concrete replacement. Last but not least, the design equations aimed at evaluating the residual load-bearing capacity after repairing are also presented and discussed.