Tension Stiffening of Reinforced Concrete Shear Elements Strengthened with Externally Bonded FRP Sheets (original) (raw)

The tensile contribution of concrete, known as tension stiffening, is usually neglected when calculating the strength of reinforced concrete (RC) members. However, tension stiffening affects the post-cracking stiffness and consequently the overall behavior in terms of deflection and crack width of the member under service load. There have been many investigations conducted on the tension stiffening effect in RC members, but very few on Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) RC members. This paper presents the results of a study of the tension stiffening in FRP RC members based on 12 full-scale tensile tests. The results indicate that the presence of the externally bonded FRP material typically alters the main characteristics of the stress-strain relationships of concrete in tension and associated crack patterns.