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Abstract
An effective technique for strengthening of concrete members is to provide extra reinforcements in the form of externally bonded fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) sheets. Nonetheless, debonding often prevents strengthened beams from gaining their full load capacity and experimental studies have confirmed this. The current study proposes a non-linear three-dimensional (3D) finite element model to look into debonding failure of FRP sheets and its consequential effects in various strengthening schemes such as side-bonded and U-wrap (i.e. continuous FRP or discontinuous strips). 3D elements with linear elastic orthotropic constitutive relation was assumed for the FRP sheet and appropriate interface elements are used to simulate bond–slip behaviour between concrete, internal steel reinforcements and external FRP reinforcement. Once the model was validated against published experimental results, a parametric study was conducted to research the influence of some parameters on the shear capacity and failure mode, with a particular emphasis on the interfacial behaviour and debonding phenomena. The results show the significance of each parameter as well as FRP configuration on failure of retrofitted beams.