Abstract

Though Reinforced Concrete (RC) continuous beams are vastly used in civil engineering, little experimental work on repairing and strengthening of continuous T beams has been carried out; especially, experiments on strengthening the hogging zone of continuous  beams are very rare. This paper attempts to address an important practical issue which is not considered in existing conventional strengthening technique that is, the installation constrains due to the presence of column. This paper also presents a straightforward technique of applying CFRP laminate for strengthening the hogging zone of continuous  beam considering the constrains caused by the column. The beams are modelled using FEM (LUSAS). Existing two well-known research works on strengthening continuous beams are also modelled using this FEM as case study, where a good agreement between the test results and results from FEM is observed. Finally, it is concluded that the proposed method is very easy and effective, and for obtaining complete design guideline for strengthening Tbeam; future recommendations are also visualized through this paper.

Key words: Carbon fiber, strengthening, hogging zone, continuous beam, numerical investigation.