Repair and strengthening using composites

The use of adhesively bonded composites for repair and strengthening of civil engineering structures has been largely developed for several years due to their high mechanical properties (in particular they are corrosion resistant, with high strength to weight ratio, longitudinal stiffness, flexibility of fibers and pultruded plates with easy packaging and handling…) and also the speed of installation as their application is less time consuming and less traffic disruptive than traditional solutions during strengthening works.

The laboratory has led research on these repair/strengthening techniques for many years that consist in using these composite materials as additional external reinforcing elements. Research is conducted in collaboration with laboratories MAST/Navier, COSYS/LISIS and Cerema, focusing on the mechanical behavior of adhesively bonded composites on concrete for:

• developing specific characterization methods or non destructive tests based on infrared thermography or shearography ;
• the analysis of their durability and the evaluation of creep behavior.

Some tests are performed in the lab on reinforced concrete elements strengthened by adhesively bonded composite plates, to quantify their performance under quasi-static or seismic load tests. The laboratory is associated to some studies on the use of composites for strengthening steel and prestressed concrete structures.

Contact : marc.quiertant@univ-eiffel.fr