Reinforced
concrete (RC) beams can be strengthened in shear with externally bonded fibre
reinforced polymer (FRP)
composite strips. Despite the relatively large body of
research available, there remains uncertainty regarding the distribution and
magnitude of strains and stresses in the concrete, and in the externally bonded
FRP. Of particular importance is the contribution of the FRP reinforcement to
the shear strength at ultimate. In this paper, a finite
element (FE) investigation
on RC beams strengthened in shear with epoxy bonded FRP strips is undertaken
and the results compared with test data. The study shows that the FE approach
is able to capture the overall behaviour of the test specimens, including
debonding of the FRP strips of a FRP Ustrip
shearstrengthened.