Reinforcement by bonding of laminates made from steel, fiber-reinforced polymers (FRP) and especially carbon fiber-reinforced polymers (CFRP) are used for strengthening concrete structures. Due to its excellent material properties, such as high fatigue resistance, high stiffness and high tensile strength, CFRP is used to influence the flexural stiffness and ductility, as well as to strengthen and repair aging concrete structures. In addition to the traditional repair and strengthening methods, such as replacement or reinforcement via additional structural members, this practice has become part of the applied rehabilitation methods in civil engineering in many countries.
The result has been the publication of numerous guidelines and codes, which allow the designer to apply this modern strengthening technique to concrete structures [18]. The bonding of reinforcement is mainly used in the following cases:
• a need to improve the load capacity of concrete structures due to errors in the original design process, accidental damage or extension of service life
• a need to increase load capacity due to adaptation of use
Steel plates for reinforcement are pretreated by grit blasting and coating with protective and anticorrosive primers. Due to their low weight, the advantage of CFRP reinforcement straps is that they can be bonded without using devices temporarily to support (mechanically) the strap until setting of the adhesives begins.
The use of permanent mechanical devices to prestress the adhesively bonded reinforcement strap at both sides is an additional method to further increase the static load capacity of a concrete structure.
8.3.4