Experimental Investigation of Bond Characteristics between CFRP and Steel under Tensile Loads

Rehabilitation of damaged infrastructure has become a priority in recent years as an alternative to the daunting costs of rebuilding structures. Traditional strengthening methods have drawbacks, many of which can be overcome through the use of carbon fiber reinforced polymer CFRP. Considerable research has been directed to investigate the effectiveness of bond length and strength between CFRP and steel. Research results indicated that significant increase in strength due to CFRP strengthening can be obtained. Nevertheless, in-depth understanding of debonding failures along the steel-epoxy interface is still a challenging issue. This paper presents three different experimental models with new surface preparation to increase bond strength and control debonding failure between CFRP fabrics and steel. The experimental results indicated that debonding failure can be controlled to some extent with proposed surface preparation technology.