ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymers, CFRP, offer excellent corrosion resistance to environmental agents as well as the advantages of high stiffness-to-weight and strength-to-weight ratios when compared to conventional construction materials. Perhaps the biggest advantage of CFRP is its tailorability. One common application for CFRP sheets is to strengthen slabs and walls when openings are to be made. In spite of this, there have not been many studies reported on slabs with openings strengthened with CFRP and especially, not with distributed loading. This paper presents numerical analyses of simply supported two-way concrete slabs with openings strengthened with CFRP sheets. The finite element program ABAQUS is utilized for the analyses. The analyses are compared with full-scale laboratory tests and show a good agreement.
