Strengthening and Retrofitting of RC Beams by Titanium Alloys Using NSM Technique

Abstract

Reinforced concrete (RC) beams are structural elements can have some deformation due to applied loads on. The amount of deformation depends on many factors like the compressive strength of the concrete (fc`), the reinforcement percentage, the reinforcement design, etc. Deformation can be minimized using some strengthening and retrofitting techniques like wrapping structures with fibers to act as additional reinforcement, replacing some steel reinforcement with alternatives, or any other strengthening technique. This study will discuss the Near-Surface Mounted (NSM) reinforcement technique that can be used by making grooves in the concrete cover and apply the desired material in (Titanium Alloys will be used here) to examine the effects of used material on the strength of beams. Titanium Alloys are made up of mixing Titanium with other chemical elements. This mixture has some special properties like obtaining high tensile strength, corrosion resistance, light weight, etc. which make it possible to be used in RC structures. A T-shaped 5490 mm long beam with a deck of size (165x914) mm and (229x749) mm stem was in one half of the specimen and enlarged to be (321 x 1048) mm stem with reinforcement and two (25×25) mm Titanium bars was modeled to verify results with the data given by (Higgins et al., 2017). A new control beam was modeled without using Titanium to examine the enhancement when changing parameters for other 11 beams. Parametric study was done to explore the best method, location, and the number of Titanium bars used to strengthen T-beam with having a transitional point in which the T-beam dimension changed. As a result for this study, to have the best enhancement in the maximum moment capacity for T-Beam with different dimension, two Titanium bars with dimension (25×25) mm on each side should be used.