Rehabilitation of deteriorated reinforced self-consolidating concrete brackets and corbels using CFRP composites : diagnosis and treatment

Corbels can be considered as one of the important members in buildings, cranes, and bridge structures. Sometimes, it is necessary to upgrade corbels within a certain level of the service load to improve performance and increase the life of the structure. In some cases, like changes in use, design error, and degradation due to extreme weather conditions, the corbels need to be upgraded or strengthened. In the present work, a comparison between the performance of RC corbels that are strengthened or repaired using the externally bonded (EB) carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) sheets is made. Specimens have been cast and tested under one-point static load with a/d = 0.95. Three levels of damage before upgrading are considered as: no damage, 0.45Po, and 0.65Po. It has been found that strengthening using the horizontal and diagonal configuration resulted in an improvement in capacity by 45%, while repairing beyond the damage level of 0.45Po, the respective value was 51%, and for 0.65Po damage level, the improvement was 54%.