Shear strengthening of reinforced concrete members with textile reinforced mortar (TRM) jackets

The application of textile reinforced mortar (TRM) as a means of increasing the shear resistance of reinforced concrete members is investigated in this study. TRM may be considered as an alternative to fiber reinforced polymers (FRP), providing solutions to many of the problems associated with application of the latter without compromising much the performance of strengthened members. Based on the experimental response of reinforced concrete members strengthened in shear it is concluded that textile-mortar jacketing provides substantial gain in shear resistance; this gain is higher as the number of layers increases and, depending on the number of layers, is sufficient to transform shear-type failure to flexural failure. TRM jackets were provided in this study either by conventional wrapping of fabrics or by helically applied strips. Both systems resulted in excellent results in terms of increasing the shear resistance. However, compared with their resin-impregnated counterparts, mortar-impregnated textiles may result in reduced effectiveness. Modelling of reinforced concrete members strengthened in shear with TRM jackets instead of FRP ones is presented by the authors as a rather straightforward procedure by the proper introduction of experimentally derived jacket effectiveness coefficients. From the limited results obtained in this study it is believed that TRM jacketing is an extremely promising solution for increasing the shear resistance of reinforced concrete members.