An innovative retrofit system consisting of fiber-reinforced polymers (FRP) and high-performance concrete (HPC) considering the difficulty of the accessibility and installation of FRP on the underside of reinforced concrete (RC) slabs was found to be efficient in the flexural strengthening of existing RC slabs. It is important to note that continuous slabs using the FRP-HPC retrofit systems are less effective in exploiting FRP tensile strength and can cause sudden failure once excessively enhanced flexural strength exceeds shear strength. A design method to ensure ductile failure mode was also proposed for strengthened continuous RC slabs in the previous literature. Thus, it is necessary to optimize retrofit systems in terms of mechanical performance aspects to improve the efficiency of retrofitted slabs in serviceability. This study proposes a design method for optimizing the strength of materials and inducing ductile failure of continuous slab retrofitting FRP-HPC systems. The proposed approach demonstrated its effectiveness for strengthening a continuous RC slab with various FRP-HPC retrofit systems through a case study. The results show that the design factored load in the serviceability limit state does not change appreciably from a decrease in carbon fiber-reinforced polymers (CFRP) of 38%; the design factored load decreased only by 9% and the ultimate failure load by 13% while reducing CFRP by 20% and HPC by 25%.
Keywords: FRP; continuous RC slab; optimal design; retrofit; strengthen.