Structural shear retrofitting of reinforced concrete beam: multilayer ferrocement technique

Most of the existing buildings in developing countries lack proper reinforcement and are in danger of collapse under seismic and extreme events. Therefore, a sustainable and feasible retrofitting technique is necessary to ensure the safety of the infrastructure and its occupants. This paper describes a broad experimental programme, in which a total of 20 reinforced concrete beams with shear deficiency were constructed, 4 of them considered as control beam, while the rest of the beams were retrofitted with ferrocement in four different techniques after loading up to initial crack. All the specimens were tested up to the failure, and beam deflection at different points along with the load versus displacement response was recorded for each case. It allowed the determination of elastic stiffness, peak strength and associated displacement capacity of the retrofitted beam, compared with control beams. From the observed results, a plausible technique of retrofitting using ferrocement is suggested. A preliminary finite element model is developed for future study, which compared the experimental and FE results.