Experimental Testing of CFRP Splays Bonded to Uniaxial Fabric

Abstract

The use of fiber reinforced polymers (FRP's) for structural repair or retrofit has increased significantly in the last decade, with adoption for civil infrastructure occurring only in the last 20 years. These products are most often used to increase the capacity of damaged or deteriorated structures. Much research has been performed in the arena of testing of various FRP's bonded to both concrete and masonry substrates, the majority of which focusing on three areas; flexural strengthening, in-plane shear strengthening, and mechanical anchoring. Anchorage is commonly the limiting factor in the application of FRP's, due to the inability of the edge of the polymer matrix to reliably extend beyond a point of zero-interfacial stress. Where interfacial stresses exist and the FRP is terminated localized disbondment often occurs, these localized failures then propagate across the entire bond of the structural system. Various mechanical termination details have been tested to mitigate the potential failure modes near the ends of the fabric. There, however, has been very limited research performed on the behavior of dowels which are installed parallel to the FRP fabric and splayed onto the FRP fabric matrix. In this research the mechanical properties of carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) dowels with a parallel orientation to uniaxial carbon fabric are experimentally tested to determine the tensile capacity of "dowel to splay" CFRP connections and to discover any dominant failure modes.