Plate end (PE) debonding is one of the critical debonding failure modes that may occur in reinforced concrete (RC) beams strengthened with externally bonded fiber reinforced polymers (FRPs). This study investigated the effect of internal steel stirrups on the PE debonding failure load of FRP-strengthened RC beams. The dimensions of the beams were 3400 × 400 × 200 mm. The beams were strengthened with carbon FRP (CFRP) sheets bonded to the soffit of the beams. The beams were divided into two series based on the distance of the cutoff point of the CFRP sheets from the nearest support. This distance was 50 mm or 300 mm, and the amount of steel stirrups was varied in terms of varying the stirrup diameter and spacing. The beams were simply supported and tested under four-point bending. The test results indicate that the effect of stirrups on the load carrying capacity of the beams was more pronounced for the beams with CFRP sheets extended close to the supports. It was also indicated that beams with larger amounts of stirrups failed in PE debonding by concrete cover separation while beams with lower amounts of stirrups failed in PE by either PE interfacial debonding or critical diagonal crack-induced debonding. The beams were analyzed using several analytical models from design guidelines and the literature. The result of analysis indicates that most of the available models failed to reflect the effect of stirrups in predicting PE debonding failure load of the beams. On the other hand, the models of El-Sayed et al. and Teng and Yao were able to capture such an effect with the best predictions provided by El-Sayed et al. model.
Keywords: FRP strengthening; concrete beams; plate end debonding; stirrups.