Flexural behavior of reinforced concrete beams retrofitted or repaired with slurry infiltrated mat concrete (SIMCON)

This dissertation develops a basic understanding of the flexural behavior of concrete beams retrofitted or repaired with Slurry Infiltrated Mat Concrete (SIMCON). Concrete beams are wrapped on three sides with SIMCON to result in high performance composite elements with pseudo-ductile characteristics. The proposed method maximizes system performance by using high performance materials in the tension zone. This technique can be used for repair or retrofit of existing concrete elements.;The first part of this research provides an in depth background review of related work completed by other investigators. In the second part, the flexural behavior of retrofitted composite beams are examined using a non-linear analytical procedure, and appropriate material behavior models are adopted. In addition, a simplified design approach is presented based on given strength requirements. Part three presents an extensive experimental program that evaluates the basic flexural characteristics of the proposed retrofitting concept. The experimental program was conducted in two phases consisting of small and large scale beams subjected to third point loadings. In the fourth part, a comparison is provided between the reference beams and the retrofitted or repaired beams. The comparison illustrates that the increase in strength of a concrete beam achieved with the proposed retrofit technique is related to the area of SIMCON added to the tension zone of the beam. This increase in the strength varied from 20 percent to 123 percent. The analytical results agree quite well with the experiments and it can be concluded that the flexural strength of SIMCON retrofitted elements can be predicted using basic flexural theory.