The Use of Composites in the Rehabilitation of Civil Engineering Structures

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to review the development of composites, and specifically the use of fiber reinforced polymer to strengthen unreinforced masonry (URM) structures. Presented are two applications of FRP bars for the strengthening of URM walls. In the first application, near surface mounted (NSM) FRP bars are used as flexural reinforcement to strengthen URM walls to resist out-of-plane forces. In the second application, a retrofitting technique denominated FRP Structural Repointing is described. Since the inception of FRP for use to accomplish seismically retrofitting on bridge columns in 1989, composites have been successfully used in a wide variety of bridges and structures. FRP now have the benefit of building codes which describe their use, and this gives engineers the comfort to specify FRP in their projects.