Revista Romana de Materiale/ Romanian Journal of Materials, cilt.52, sa.4, ss.394-403, 2022 (SCI-Expanded)
© 2022, Fundatia Serban Solacolu. All rights reserved.The presented study investigates the efficiency of repairing damaged reinforced concrete beams by a novel technique, which is the injection of epoxy resin to the cracks. The two main test parameters were the amount of flexural reinforcement (low, medium, and high) and the level of seismic damage before repair (light, moderate, and heavy). Nine cantilever beams were tested under reversed cyclic transverse loading in the undamaged (original) and repaired (after damaging) states. The test results were examined and discussed in terms of the initial flexural rigidity and ultimate load capacity. The technique was shown to be the most effective in damaged beams with mid-sized cracks. The minor cracks particularly in lightly-reinforced beams were not suitable for proper injection of resin, while the major cracks resulted in the epoxy to govern the flexural behavior of the beam after repair. The experimental load capacities were shown to be in close agreement with the analytical flexural capacities of the respective beams. The sizes of the cracks before repair and the longitudinal reinforcement did not affect the repaired beam to reach the load capacity of the original counterpart but affected the extent of deformations before reaching this load level.