Novel prefabricated panels for the repair of damaged interior RC beam-column joints

Abstract

A novel prefabricated panel is introduced for the repair and strengthening of damaged interior RC beam-column joints. This prefabricated hybrid composite plate (HCP) is made of a Strain Hardening Cementitious Composite (SHCC) reinforced with CFRP materials. Besides the higher durability of this system when compared to EB-FRP, thanks to the high ductility of the SHCC, anchors can be used in combination with adhesive to attach the HCP to the concrete substrate. The first section of this paper reports the methodologies to apply HCP for the repair of two severely damaged interior RC beam-column systems. To evaluate the performance of this rehabilitation technique, the repaired specimens were subjected to the same loading pattern as it was imposed to their virgin states. Since both repaired specimens showed a higher lateral load and energy dissipation capacities than the corresponding values in their undamaged state, the effectiveness of the HCP for the repair of damaged interior beam-column joints is proved.