Applications of bolted steel plates to shear strengthening of RC beams

Many reinforced concrete beams have been found deficiencies in shear due to lack of shear reinforcement. Few researches have been done to investigate shear strengthening of low concrete strength of RC beams using bolted steel plates. This paper presents experimental results on the behaviour of RC beams strengthening using full steel plates along the shear span fixed with bolts. Nine RC beams having dimension of 150x200x1500mm were tested to failure on simply supports with four point loadings setup. The beams were reinforced with tension rebars area of 289.8 mm2 (2D10+1D13) and transvers reinforcement of Ø6-125. Two dial gauges were installed at the beam middle span to measure beam deflection during the test. The results show that the applications of steel plate and bolts as external reinforcement increase beam shear capacity, stiffness and delay the occurrence of first diagonal cracks. Beams stregnthened with U-shape plates gave better performances than the beams with two pieces of L-shape plates due to better achorages.