Flexural and compression behavior for steel structures strengthened with Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymers (CFRPs) sheet

This paper presents the experimental results of flexural and compression steel members strengthened with carbon fiber reinforced polymers (CFRP) sheets. In the flexural test, the five specimens were fabricated and the test parameters were the number of CFRP ply and the ratio of partial-length bonded CFRP sheets of specimen. The CFRP sheet strengthened steel beam had failure mode: CFRP sheet rupture at the mid span of steel beams. A maximum increase of 11.3% was achieved depending on the number of CFRP sheet ply and the length of CFRP sheet. In the compression test, the nine specimens were fabricated and the main parameters were: width-thickness ratio (b/t), the number of CFRP ply, and the length of the specimen. From the tests, for short columns it was observed that two sides would typically buckle outward and the other two sides would buckle inward. Also, for long columns, overall buckling was observed. A maximum increase of 57% was achieved in axial-load capacity when 3 layers of CFRP were used to wrap HSS columns of b/t = 60 transversely.