Experimental assessment of flexural enhancement in cracked reinforced concrete beams using carbon textile-reinforced concrete under sustained service loading

DOI: https://doi.org/10.55228/JTST150304

Keywords

Textile-reinforced concrete, Carbon fiber, Flexural strengthening, U-shaped configuration, Sustained loading

Abstract

This paper presents an experimental study on the flexural strengthening of pre-cracked reinforced concrete (RC) beams using carbon textile-reinforced concrete (TRC) under sustained loading conditions. Three beams were tested under four-point bending, including a control specimen (F0), a beam strengthened with two layers of flat TRC (F1), and a beam strengthened with a single-layer U-shaped TRC configuration (F2). The strengthened beams were preloaded to 75% of the ultimate load of the control beam and maintained at 55% during strengthening and curing to simulate realistic repair conditions. The results show that carbon TRC significantly improves both flexural capacity and crack control. The ultimate load increased by 45.1% for F1 and 47.2% for F2, while crack widths were reduced by approximately 30–50%. The U-shaped configuration provided better crack distribution, with primary cracks subdivided into multiple finer cracks. These findings confirm that carbon TRC is an effective strengthening solution when complete unloading is not feasible

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