Anchorage Design for Externally Bonded Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer Laminates

The anchorage of externally bonded reinforcement is extremely important. Due to high shear stress concentrations, premature failure is often is often initiated in the end zones. A non linear model to describe the phenomena at the end of the externally bonded reinforcement has been set up to allow a safe design of the anchoring capacity and the anchorage length. Appropriate safety factors have to be used to take into account the brittle behavior of the system. A series of 24 direct shear tests were performed to verify the assumptions and to check the validity of the model. These test specimens consists of two concrete prisms bonded together with one, two or three layers of CFRP using different bonded lengths and widths.