Shear Behavior of Reinforced Concrete Beams Strengthened with Unbonded-Type Wire Rope Units

The present study reports a simple unbonded-type shear strengthening technique for reinforced concrete beams using wire rope units. Fifteen beams failed in shear were repaired and strengthened with wire rope units, and then retested to failure. Influence of the prestressing force, orientation and spacing of wire rope units on the shear behavior of strengthened beams having shear span-to-depth ratios of 1.5, 2.5, or 3.25 were investigated. Test results showed that beams strengthened with wire rope units exhibited a higher shear strength and a larger post-failure deformation than the corresponding original beams. Inclined wire rope units was more effective for shear strength enhancement than vertical wire rope units. The increase of the prestressing force in wire rope units causes the decrease of the principal tensile stress in concrete, as a result, the diagonal tensile cracking strength of strengthened beams was higher than that of the corresponding original beams. Shear capacity of strengthened beams is compared with predictions obtained from ACI 318-05 and EC 2. Shear capacity of strengthened beams having shear span-to-depth ratio below 2.5 is reasonably predicted using ACI 318-05 formula. On the other hand, EC 2 overestimates the shear transfer capacity of wire rope units for beams having shear span-to-depth ratio above 2.5.