Although carbon textile reinforcement widely used to replace the steel reinforcing bars but the bonding strength of carbon textile is generally much smaller than that of common steel bars. This study examines the strengthening effect of concrete slab-type elements strengthened in flexure by carbon textile reinforcement according to the surface coating of textile and the amount of reinforcement. The effect of the surface coating of textile on the bond strength was evaluated through a direct pullout test with four different sizes of coating material. The surface coated specimens developed bond strength approximately twice that of the uncoated specimen. The flexural strengthening effect with respect to the amount of reinforcement was investigated by a series of flexural failure tests on full-scale reinforced concrete (RC) slab specimens strengthened by textile reinforced concrete (TRC) system. The flexural failure test results revealed that the TRC system-strengthened specimens develop load-carrying capacity that is improved to at least 150% compared to the non-strengthened specimen. The strengthening performance was not significantly influenced by the textile coating and was not proportional to the amount of reinforcement when this amount was increased, owing to the change in the failure mode. The outstanding constructability afforded by TRC strengthening was verified through field applications executing TRC strengthening by shotcreting on a concrete box culvert.
Keywords: bond test; carbon textile; flexural strengthening; shotcrete; structural testing; textile reinforced concrete (TRC).