AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON THE BEHAVIOR OF RETROFITTED REINFORCED CONCRETE BEAMS IN FLEXURE

Concrete is the most widely used man made material with the characteristic that it has excellent resistance to water, the ease with which it can be casted and moulded to any desired shapes and sizes and the ready affordability of the materials with cheaper costs in the market. Moderate environmental conditions exist in considerable part of India, but highly industrialized zones, extreme hot and cold weather conditions and a large length of coastal line are present in which the concrete structures have to face severe aggressive environments. In these climatic zones, the concrete structures are deteriorated at an alarming rate. Fast track constructions, less regard to quality and poor workmanship have contributed to deterioration at a faster rate. In India, no reliable quantification of damage due to deteriorations has been made. A reliable study of the retrofitting of structures using various different materials newly introduced and available in the market has not been made so that their behavior under different loading conditions is not known. In this study, Experimental investigations have been carried out to the study the flexural behavior of retrofitted Reinforced concrete beams under two point loading conditions and compared with the flexural behavior of control beams.