Flexural performance of repaired reinforced concrete beam containing DFRCC materials

Abstract

Corrosion induced damage of Reinforced Concrete (RC) structures is the major concern worldwide as it requires costly repair and retrofitting. Different materials are used for such repair and retrofitting, they are conventional repair mortar, combined use of epoxy grout and cement mortar, Fibre Reinforced Polymer (FRP), etc. However, they exhibit limitations in terms of post-repair ductility of the repaired structure due to their inherent brittle material properties. This paper presents the behaviour of corrosion damaged RC beams repaired by Ductile Fibre Reinforced Cementitious Composites (DFRCC). DFRCC is short fibre reinforced cement based composites that exhibits deflection hardening and multiple cracking behaviour in bending. Its ductility and fracture toughness is much higher than that of conventional mortar. In this study six series of specimens are considered. The first series is kept as control (uncorroded), while the other five series are repaired using different repair materials namely the Fibre Reinforced Polymer (FRP) and the DFRCC. The repaired specimens are then structurally tested to evaluate and compare the performance of DFRCC repaired RC specimens with its counterpart FRP repaired specimens. It is observed that DFRCC provides comparable performance in terms of ultimate load and deflection capacity to that of FRP repaired beams and warrant excellent potential for repair and retrofitting of RC structures using this material.