Abstract
With the increasing use of Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) composites as external reinforcement in the rehabilitation and retrofit of existing concrete structures, more and more attention has been paid to the performance of FRP-concrete interface, which is susceptible to debonding or peeling-off due to stress concentrations or bond imperfections. In this paper, the effects of flexural cracks of concrete on interfacial shear stresses in FRP-strengthened R/C beams are investigated for several load cases based on linear elastic beam theories. Through theoretical analyses and investigations on available existing experimental data, a methodology is also proposed for predicting the debonding initiation load due to flexural cracks.
