Strengthening Reinforced Concrete Walls with Externally Bonded Galvanized Steel Sheets and Near-Surface Mounted Steel Bars

Reinforced concrete (RC) walls are mainly used in RC structures to resist gravity and lateral forces. These structural elements may need to be upgraded to withstand additional forces and extend their life cycle. Therefore, it is crucial to provide effective strengthening techniques using low-cost sustainable materials under optimal conditions to rehabilitate RC walls. This study presents an experimental and numerical investigation of reinforced normal concrete (NC) walls strengthened with near-surface mounted (NSM) steel bars, confined with or without an externally bonded reinforced (EBR) galvanized steel sheets (GSSs). A total of six RC walls were constructed, loaded, and tested to failure. The examined parameters included the type of strengthening technique, materials used, and the position and configuration of the strengthening. Both EBR and NSM techniques were applied using GSSs and steel bars, respectively. The configurations were introduced in vertical and horizontal positions to resist gravity and lateral forces, respectively. The experiments revealed that these parameters significantly influenced the crack control, energy absorption, mode of collapse, and ultimate load capacity. Nonlinear three-dimensional finite element models were developed and verified against experimental results, achieving a validation accuracy of 95% on average. This was followed by a parametric study investigating the effect of confinement with or without vertical reinforcements. Both experimental and numerical results confirmed that the strengthening could increase the ultimate load capacity from 20% to 38%.

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