Strengthening and repairing existing reinforced concrete structures is often more economical and sustainable than rebuilding them. The most commonly used technique, externally bonded Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymers (CFRP), does not answer the need for a temperature resistant, fire safe and economical solution. High performance glass fibre Textile Reinforced Cements (TRC) can offer an answer to these drawbacks. A validation of this TRC technique against the existing one of CFRP is still needed. The Digital Image Correlation (DIC) and Acoustic Emission (AE) measuring techniques are applied to monitor the bending, cracking and failure behaviour of a reference beam, a beam with CFRP external reinforcement and a precracked and non-precracked TRC external reinforced beam. Fourpoint bending tests indicate the successful complementary use of DIC and AE and prove that TRC as an external reinforcement for concrete beams actually works.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.