Journals Proceedings

Abstract

This paper presents an experimental study of rectangular clay brick masonry columns retrofitted with Fiber Reinforced Polymers (FRP). The experimental program involves casting of 15 column specimens out of which 3 specimens were tested as control specimens without application of FRP and 12 specimens were wrapped with FRP strips. The control specimens were tested till failure under uniaxial compressive load whereas the other 12 specimens were subjected to pre-compression load of around 80 to 90 % of ultimate failure load till vertical splitting cracks were observed predominantly. The FRP material used for retrofitting was Carbon (CFRP) and Glass (GFRP). The potential of FRP anchors in enhancing the load carrying capacity of columns was also accessed through the experimentation. The arrangement of FRP strips for all specimens were kept identical to have fair comparison for other parameters. From the analysis of experimental results it can be concluded that the FRP strip wrapping is an effective retrofitting technique for brick masonry. The detailed discussion on experimental results and comparisons for various parameters has been presented in this paper. This work will add to reliable experimental data base and can be utilized for further research work.