Experimental investigation of bond characteristics between CFRP fabrics and steel plate joints under impact tensile loads

In recent years, the use of adhesively-bonded fibre-reinforced composite materials has attracted widespread attention as a viable alternative for the retrofitting of civil infrastructure such as buildings and bridges. This has been particularly the case for concrete structures. The retrofitting of metallic bridges and buildings with FRP materials, however, is still in its early stages. In real life, these structures are subjected to dynamic loads. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the bond behaviour between steel and the strengthening materials for both static and dynamic loads. To examine the bond between steel plates and carbon fibre-reinforced polymers (CFRP) fabrics, this paper describes the experimental procedures and results of double strap steel joints loaded at different loading rates (2 mm/min, 3.35, 4.43 and 5 m/s). In this test program, ultimate load-carrying capacity, effective bond length, failure mechanism and strain distribution were examined for all loading rates. Different numbers of CFRP layers with different bond lengths were investigated. Experimental findings reveal that the maximum improvement in joint capacity occurs at a rate of 3.35 m/s. It was observed that the effective bond length is insensitive to loading rate for both joints. The failure modes and strain distributions, however, exhibit little difference between static and dynamic conditions.