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Go to Editorial ManagerA large number of RC structures or at least some of their members need strengthening or rehabilitation. Among the typical failure modes, the shear failure is more dangerous and less predictable, because of usually brittle behavior and sudden collapse. Therefore, there are necessities for upgrading the shear capacity and the local ductility of reinforced concrete beams. In this study, four different techniques of concrete jacketing were used to improve the behaviors of the shear deficiencies beams. The four techniques used in this study to enhance the behavior of the beams were by using a Self-Compacted Fiber Reinforced Concrete jacket without stirrups (S.-J. + Steel Fiber), a concrete jacket of Self Compacted Concrete with stirrups (S.-J. + Stirrups), a concrete jacket of ferrocement jacket (S.-J. + Ferrocement), and a concrete jacket of ferrocement jacket with external steel reinforcing bars (S.-J. + Ferrocement + R). These techniques contributed to enhancing the load-carrying capacity and delaying the appearance of the first crack in tested beams compared with the control beam by a percentage of (35, 59, 30, 6) % and (18, 35, 81, 80) %, respectively. The specimen (S.-J. + Stirrups) showed the best performance in comparison with the other used strengthening techniques used in this study in terms of stiffness and the ultimate load-carrying capacity. The ferrocement jacket (S.-J. + Ferrocement) was found to be the most suitable jacketing system used to enhance the shear capacity in terms of cracking load.
In recent decades, the need for strengthening and repairing reinforced concrete structures has increasingly arisen. One common method is the use of concrete jackets. Slurry Infiltrated Fiber Concrete (SIFCON), a newly developed material, offers superior mechanical properties, making it a preferred choice for strengthening and repairing concrete structures. However, there is limited understanding of its bonding performance when used as an overlay on a Normal Strength Concrete (NSC) substrate. This study conducted a direct Shear Test (DST) to evaluate the bond performance using reinforced NSC cubes externally bonded with SIFCON jackets subjected to direct shear. Eighteen reinforced cubes were strengthened with various bonding systems to investigate how different factors affect the bond performance between the NSC substrate and SIFCON overlay. The parameters studied included surface preparation methods, binder types, jacket configurations, bonding conditions (fresh overlay on hardened substrate and hardened overlay on hardened substrate), dowel placement, and bonding mechanisms. The results show that using bonding agents significantly improved bond strength, with epoxy proving more effective than latex. Specimens prepared by chipping showed better bonding performance compared to those prepared through diamond cutting. Chipping increased bond strength by 8.91% to 13.84% over diamond cutting in the case of fresh SIFCON overlay on hardened substrate. Using dowels in the bonding systems also improved bond performance by 10.89% to 16.97%. Applying jackets to three sides instead of two increased the ultimate failure load by 31.76% when dowels were used in both the two-sided and three-sided strengthened samples, and by 35.45% in the absence of dowels in both types of strengthened specimens. The cast-in-situ specimens demonstrated superiority over those strengthened with precast jacket layers.