Abstract
This paper presents the first phase of an ongoing research program at University of Waterloo to study the effect of external fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) sheet wrap confinement along a lap splice of reinforced concrete (RC) beams on their fatigue bond strength. Fatigue loading of RC beams containing a lap splice resulted in an increase in the number and width of cracks, an increase in deflection, and a decrease of the bond strength between the steel rebar and the surrounding concrete. The phase of the research described here consists of monotonic and fatigue tests of sixteen reinforced concrete beam with dimensions 2200x350x250mm. Each beam was reinforced with two 20M bars lap spliced in the constant moment region of the tension zone and two 10M bars in the compression zone outside the constant moment region. The test variables were the presence or absence of an FRP wrapping, the type of the FRP wrapping glass or carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP or CFRP), the type of loading, and the fatigue load range. The test results for monotonic loading showed that the stiffness of all beams was almost the same, but that the FRP sheet wrapping increased the bond strength and the deflection at ultimate load. All beams tested under fatigue loading failed by a bond failure except one CFRP-wrapped beam that failed by fatigue of the main reinforcement. The FRP sheet increased the bond strength for all specimens under fatigue loading. (C) 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.