Precast
prestressed hollow core slabs are very commonly used as floor system in Saudi
Arabia in the booming precast
concrete construction industry.
Strengthening of
these slabs may be required for several reasons including increased load due to
higher dead or live loads, architectural modifications in locations of walls,
damage due to corrosion, installation of heavy machinery, opening cut through
slabs and errors in planning, construction and design. This paper presents the
results of flexural strengthening of hollow core slabs using CFRP sheets. Seven
fullscale hollow core slabs (5.0 m span, 1.2 m width and 0.2 m thickness) were
tested under flexure using four point loading up to failure, with one slab
being tested as control specimen and the remaining six slabs strengthened with
CFRP. Experimental results show that the flexural load carrying capacity of
precast
prestressed hollow core slabs increased in the range of 14 to 40%
depending on the width/layers of CFRP sheets used. Interesting transition in
the behavior of the hollow core panels from flexure to shear failure was noted
as the number of layers of CFRP sheets was increased. A good correlation was
observed between the experimental and the predicted values obtained using a
strain compatibility approach.