COMPOSITES - A NEW POSSIBILITY FOR THE SHEAR STRENGTHENING OF CONCRETE, MASONRY AND WOOD

The paper presents a compilation of some of the author's research resu lts related to the use of composites as shear strengthening materials for concrete, masonry and wood members. The main emphasis is on the pr esentation of analytical models for the contribution of composites to the shear capacity of strengthened elements, within the framework of u ltimate limit states. It is demonstrated that in the case of concrete and masonry, the design of FRP-strengthened members can be treated on the basis of the classical truss analogy and by accounting for an effe ctive I;RP strain, which depends on the product of the FRP elastic mod ulus and the area fraction, while the analysis of shear strength in th e case of wood members is quite straightforward, following basic princ iples of mechanics. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved