Construction and Building Materials 131 (2017) 713720

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Construction and Building Materials

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/conbuildmat

Experimental study on the fatigue behaviour of RC beams strengthened

with TRC after sustained load corrosion
Sheng Jie a, Yin Shi-ping a,b,, Wang Fei a, YangYang b
a
State Key Laboratory for Geomechanics & Deep Underground Engineering, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221116, China
b
Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Environmental Impact and Structural Safety in Engineering, School of Mechanics & Civil Engineering, China University of Mining and Technology,
Xuzhou 221116, China

h i g h l i g h t s

 TRC can improve the fatigue life and delay the development of fatigue cracks of RC beams.
 The coupling action of the sustained load and chloride corrosion causes RC beams fatigue life to decrease significantly.
 The amplitude difference affects the fatigue life of TRC-strengthened beams.
 The mid-span deflection development of TRC-strengthened beams under fatigue test undergoes three stages.
 The corrosion fatigue weakens the bond performance between the TRC layer and old concrete.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: To study the fatigue properties of reinforced concrete (RC) beams strengthened with textile reinforced
Received 10 March 2015 concrete (TRC), which consisted of a hybrid textile made from carbon and E-glass yarns and high perfor-
Received in revised form 14 August 2016 mance concrete, after sustaining load corrosion, three RC beams without TRC and four RC beams with TRC
Accepted 7 November 2016
were designed. Among these beams, one strengthened beam and one un-strengthened beam were not
Available online 11 November 2016
subjected to sustaining load corrosion, while the other five beams were immersed in a sodium chloride
solution at a concentration of 5% and were subjected to different loads. After six months of dry-wet
Keywords:
cycles, all of the beams were subjected to the bending fatigue test. The results showed that the distribu-
Textile reinforced concrete
Enhancement
tion of fatigue cracks and the fatigue life of the strengthened beams were better than those of the un-
Bending fatigue strengthened beams regardless of their subjection to corrosion; however, corrosion was shown to
Corrosion weaken the bond between the TRC and the old concrete. The fatigue life of the beams was affected when
Sustaining load they sustained loads because of the initial deformation that appeared. The existence of an initial defor-
mation decreased the amplitude difference of the beams that suffered from corrosion. The development
of deflection in the strengthened beams with corrosion could be divided into the following three stages:
initial, stable, and rapid stages; the development of residual deflection exhibited an initially increasing
and then decreasing tendency. The combination of sustained load and corrosion decreased the fatigue life
of the beams more than either the sustained load or the corrosion alone.
2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Textile-reinforced concrete (TRC) consists of a multiaxial textile
and a high-performance concrete. TRC has significant potential
when applied to structures exposed to inclement mechanical or
environmental loads because it has an excellent bearing capacity
and its capability to delay the formation of cracks and multiple
Corresponding author at: State Key Laboratory for Geomechanics & Deep
Underground Engineering, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou
221116, China.
E-mail address: yinshiping7808@aliyun.com (Y. Shi-ping).
cracks, resist seepage, resist corrosion, and self-heal cracks [1,2].
Furthermore, TRC combines the advantages of fibre-reinforced
plastic (FRP) reinforcement and reinforced sprayed concrete as
repair and enhancement layers [3].
The structure of TRC has been studied in relation to bending,
shear, and seismic resistance. According to the literatures [4,5],
an increase in the amount of textile reinforcement causes a
decrease in the deflection of bending members and a significant
improvement in the bearing capacity of bending members.
Elsanadedy et al. [6] indicated that the flexural capacity of beams
reinforced with FRP was slightly better than that of beams

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2016.11.030
0950-0618/ 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
714 S. Jie et al. / Construction and Building Materials 131 (2017) 713720
reinforced with TRC and that TRC had obvious advantages in terms
of ductility. Numerical simulation showed that adding a U-anchor
to beams with TRC was an effective means for controlling the de-
bonding failure of the members. According to the literatures [7
10], TRC can increase the flexural bearing capacity of the RC beam.
At the same time, the beams cracks exhibited dense and fine
characteristics, and their development was controlled. An increase
in the TRCs textile composition decreased the spacing and width
of the cracks. Weiland et al. [3] observed that cracks in damaged
reinforced concrete (RC) slabs that existed before reinforcement
were bridged by the TRC-reinforced layer after reinforcement,
and the width of the cracks was almost unchanged until the failure
state was reached. Research on the bending capacity of slabs rein-
forced with TRC conducted by Schladitz et al. [11] showed that
when the amount of reinforcement was increased, the deflection
of the plates shrinks and the bearing capacity was significantly
improved. The pseudo-static test of five beamcolumn joints with
seismic deficiency under cyclic lateral loading conducted by Al-
Salloum et al. [12] showed that reinforcement with TRC effectively
improved the shear strength and ductility of beamcolumn joints
with seismic deficiency and had good energy dissipation capacity.
Brckner et al. [13] reported that when failure occurred, crack
development became visible with the gradual fibre fracturing
and slowly expanding to nearby fibres so that deterioration of
the members could be detected quickly and conveniently. Gopi-
nath et al. [14] studied the flexural behaviour of RC beams
strengthened with basalt TRC under monotonic and low-cycle fati-
gue load in a conventional environment. The research results
showed that the ductility and energy absorption of the strength-
ened beams increased significantly when the strengthened beams
were subjected to monotonic loading. However, the load carrying
capacity did not have a considerable increase. Compared to the
monotonic case, when the strengthened beams were subjected to
low-cycle fatigue load, they were weaker in ultimate load carrying
capacity and ductility.
Previous studies have proven that TRC has a positive effect on
reinforcing concrete slabs and that the flexural behaviour of beams
is improved; these studies were mostly conducted under static
load and in a conventional environment and there is a little
research available on the fatigue performance of RC beams
strengthened with TRC [14]. TRC has great potential when applied
in an inclement environment because of its excellent resistance to
corrosion. Based on such conditions, experiments have been con-
ducted on the fatigue performance of RC beams reinforced with
TRC under sustained load in aggressive environments.
2. Experimental program
2.1. Test beams design and materials
In this test, seven reinforced concrete beams, H1H7, were con-
structed. Among them, beams H1, H2 and H6 were non-textile
reinforcement beams, and the remaining beams were strength-
ened with TRC. The corrosion beams, H1H5, were soaked in a
5% sodium chloride solution. Beams H6 and H7 were not subjected
to a sustained load or corrosion. The cross-sections of the non-
reinforced beams measured 120 mm  240 mm. The sectional
dimensions of the beams that were reinforced were
120 mm  230 mm before reinforcement and 120 mm  240 mm
after reinforcement. The length of all the beams was 2400 mm,
and the length of the pure bending section was 800 mm. The lon-
gitudinal tensile steel reinforcement used in the beams consisted
of two hot-rolled steel bars with a diameter of 14 mm whose mea-
sured yield strength was 500 MPa, and the two erection steel bars
had diameters of 8 mm. The stirrups had a diameter of 6.5 mm and
were spaced at 100 mm. The concrete strength was C40, and the
measured compressive strength on the cubes with dimensions of
150 mm  150 mm  150 mm was 44.6 MPa at 28 d. The basic
parameters of the test beams are provided in Table 1.
In this investigation, a hybrid textile composed of carbon and E-
glass yarns was used. The mesh size of the textile is
10 mm  10 mm, and its detailed parameters are found in the lit-
erature [10]. The carbon fibre bundle is a reinforcement fibre
whose cross-sectional area is 0.45 mm2 [10], and the glass fibre
bundle is a fixed fibre, and its load-carrying contribution was not
considered in this study. The textile was epoxy resin-coated before
use. Then, when it was used to reinforce the beams, it was cut into
various widths and lengths based on the requirements. In this test,
the length of the textile was 2000 mm and the width of the textile
(containing 10 carbon fibre bundles) was 120 mm. Each strength-
ened RC beam used two layers of textiles. The high-performance
concrete mix proportion is provided in Table 2.
The materials used in this experiment included 52.5 R ordinary
Portland cement, first class fly ash (FA), polycarboxylic series
high-performance water reducer, 3264 mesh common quartz
sand (fine sand), and 2632 mesh common quartz sand (coarse
sand). The actual strength of the high-performance concrete on
the cubes with dimensions of 70.7 mm  70.7 mm  70.7 mm
was measured to be 52.8 MPa at 28 d. The single-side reinforce-
ment method was used to strengthen the specimens, in which only
the bottom surfaces of the beams were reinforced. The diagram of
reinforcement is shown in Fig. 1.
2.2. Soaking program
Beams H1H5 were soaked in 5% sodium chloride solution
under sustained load (see Fig. 2). The percentages of the sustained
loads of beams H1, H2, H3, H4, and H5 were 0, 20%, 20%, 40%, and
60% of the ultimate load of the un-reinforced beams, respectively.
The soaking time was 6 months, and the wet-dry cycle was 24 h.
The loading method was a four-point flexural test and load with
a jack. In the centre of the beams was a pure bending section of
800 mm.
2.3. Test set-up
The layout of the loading and measuring points is shown in
Fig. 3. The loading system adopted was the hydraulic servo system
developed by Hangzhou Bangwei, and the data, including steel
strain and mid-span deflection, were gathered by DH3817 pro-
duced by Donghua Test Technology Company Limited. The fatigue
test was conducted using the symmetry of the span centre, equal
amplitude and repeated loading. The ultimate load obtained from
a separate static load test was regarded as Pu. The maximum and
minimum fatigue limit loads were, respectively, 0.7 Pu and 0.2 Pu
in this test. The test process included the following steps. First,
the static was uploaded from 0 to the upper fatigue limit, which
was divided into ten levels. Then, the static was decreased to 0.
Second, the first step was repeated, and then the static was
unloaded to half the value of the maximum fatigue load. Third, a
sinusoidal fatigue load with a frequency of 3 Hz was applied to
the texted beam. The development of cracks under the static load
was also recorded before the fatigue test began. When the cycle
number reached 1000, 5000, 10,000, 15,000, 20,000, 30,000,
40,000, 60,000, 80,000, 100,000, 150,000, 200,000, 250,000,
300,000, 400,000, 500,000, and so on, the machine was shut down
and the static load from 0 to the upper fatigue limit under ten-step
loading was conducted. The mid-span deflection, crack width, con-
crete strain, and steel strain at each static loading level were also
 S. Jie et al. / Construction and Building Materials 131 (2017) 713720 715

Table 1
Basic parameters of the test beams.

Serial number Reinforcement forms Textile ratio Af/bh0 Sustained load Number of Dry-wet cycles
H1 180
H2 20% 180
H3 Single-side reinforcement 0.036% 20% 180
H4 Single-side reinforcement 0.036% 40% 180
H5 Single-side reinforcement 0.036% 60% 180
H6
H7 Single-side reinforcement 0.036%

Table 2
High-performance concrete mix [8] (kg/m3).

Portland cement PII52.5R Fly ash Silica fume Water Fine sand Coarse sand Super plasticizer
475 168 35 262 460 920 9.1

Fig. 1. Reinforcement schematic diagram (unit: mm).

3. Experiment results and analysis

The fatigue lives and failure modes of the beams are shown in
Table 3.

3.1. Crack development and failure modes

Beams H1 and H2 were unreinforced beams subjected to corro-

Fig. 2. Sustained load and corrosion diagram.
sion. Their crack development showed an extremely analogous
progress. Before 40,000 cycles were reached, a large number of
cracks appeared. Then, the beams generated a small number of
cracks after the 40,000th cycle, and the width of the cracks
increased slightly. When the beam was destroyed, the width of
the cracks increased suddenly without any warning. When it failed,
the concrete at the top of the beams was crushed, and the tension

Table 3
Test results.

Serial Sustained load and Failure modes Fatigue life (ten

number strengthened thousand times)
H1 No loading, no Concrete crushed, steel 29.07
reinforcement unbroken
H2 20% loading, no Concrete crushed, steel 27.00
reinforcement unbroken
H3 20% loading, Concrete crushed, textile 33.76
single-side snapped, steel unbroken
reinforcement
H4 40% loading, Concrete crushed, textile 88.48
single-side snapped, steel unbroken
reinforcement
H5 60% loading, Concrete crushed, textile 60.00
Fig. 3. Loading and measuring point layout schematic diagram (unit: mm).
single-side snapped, steel unbroken
reinforcement
H6 No loading, no Concrete crushed, steel 31.55
measured. If the beams cycle number reached 2 million times reinforcement broken
H7 No loading single- Concrete crushed, textile 41.53
without a fatigue failure occurring, the static load was applied con-
side reinforcement snapped, steel unbroken
tinuously until the specimen was destroyed.
716 S. Jie et al. / Construction and Building Materials 131 (2017) 713720

steel bars did not snap. The main crack formed at the pure bending
section, and the width of the main crack of beam H2 was larger
than H1, as shown in Fig. 4(a) and (b). The reason is that the beam
H2 had an initial deformation, which generated cracks before the
fatigue test was applied. However, the width of the cracks and
the deflection in these two beams were not large when the failure
occurred. Beams H3, H4, and H5 were reinforced beams with cor-
rosion, and the process of their crack development differed from
that of beams H1 and H2. All of the cracks in the reinforced beams
with corrosion appeared before the 40,000th cycle, and the number
of cracks was inversely proportional to the degree of the sustained
load. When the fatigue test progressed, the number and width of

Fig. 4. Ultimate failure diagrams of beams.

 S. Jie et al. / Construction and Building Materials 131 (2017) 713720
the cracks remained constant. The cracks reappeared, and their
width became wider when the failure was about to occur. At this
time, the main crack appeared. When beams H3, H4, and H5 were
destroyed, the concrete at the tops of the beams were crushed, the
reinforcement layer snapped, the steel bars were pulled off and the
main crack in the pure bending section was much wider than that
of the un-reinforced beam, as shown in Fig. 4(c) to (e). The reason
is that the mid-span deflection of the reinforced beam was larger
and the internal force of the beams was redistributed when the
steel bars snapped when the beam was destroyed. Thus, the main
cracks formed in the strengthened beams were wider than those
formed in the un-strengthened beams.
Beam H6 was an un-reinforced beam without corrosion. The
concrete in the compressive zone was crushed, two stressed steel
bars were pulled off and the main crack was very wide when it
was destroyed, as shown in Fig. 4(f). But, for beam H1, the concrete
in the compressive zone was crushed, the steel bars did not snap
and the main crack was relatively narrow when it was destroyed,
as shown in Fig. 4(a). The concrete may have been easily crushed
because of corrosion.
Beam H7 was a strengthened beam without corrosion. When it
was destroyed, its compressive concrete was crushed, its steel bars
were not pulled off and the width of main crack was small. The bond-
ing between the reinforcement layer and the old concrete was intact
and no transverse cracks appeared, as shown in Fig. 4(g). However,
Fig. 4(c) shows the final failure of the corroded beam as follows: hor-
izontal cracks appeared in the reinforcement layer and the reinforce-
ment layer had a tendency to separate from the old concrete. All of
the above indicates that sodium chloride corrosion has an effect on
the behaviour of the bond between the TRC and old concrete.
The development of cracks could be divided into the following
three stages: appearance, stable development, and rapid develop-
ment. The development of the cracks in the reinforced beams
included all of the three stages, whereas those of the un-
reinforced beams underwent only the first and the second stages.
All cracks generally appeared within 400,000 cycles. The larger
the preload value loaded in the test-piece, the fewer cracks
occurred during the fatigue test. At the stable stage, few new
cracks appeared, the number of cracks remained constant and
the width of the cracks increased slowly. During the rapid develop-
ment stage, beams generated new cracks and a crack formed which
was obviously wider than others. Then, this crack developed into
the main crack that caused the failure of the beam. This stage
was the failure stage, and it was a very short stage. The develop-
ment of the cracks in the beams without corrosion also underwent
three stages, but a large number of the cracks emerged in these
beams during the first stage.
The RC beams with TRC showed a significant symptom before
failure. However, the unreinforced beams did not. This shows the
merit of the reinforced beams.
3.2. Fatigue life
3.2.1. Corrosion and 20% sustained load
As Table 4 shows, the fatigue life is reduced when the speci-
mens are subjected to corrosion or sustained load. However, the
Table 4
Comparison of fatigue lives under sustained load and corrosion.
Fatigue Influence of Effects of Interaction of corrosion
life/fatigue life corrosion sustained load and loading
H2/H1 0.93
H1/H6 0.92
H2/H6 0.86
H3/H7 0.82
Note: The values in the table denote the rates of different fatigue life.
717
reduction in fatigue life is lower because of the short corrosion
time and lower sustained load. In contrast, the combined effects
of corrosion and sustained load resulted in a more significant
reduction in their fatigue life.
3.2.2. Corrosion and 40% and 60% sustained load
A comparison of the fatigue life of beams H3, H4, and H5
showed that the increase in the sustained load did not only reduce
the fatigue life of the reinforced beams but also significantly
improved it. Furthermore, as Fig. 5 shows, the beam that sustained
40% load had the longest fatigue life, followed by the beam that
sustained 60% load and the beam that sustained a 20% load had
the shortest fatigue life, given that the beams with sustained load
had an unrecoverable initial deformation before the fatigue test,
which increased with an increase in sustained load. At the same
time, their vibration amplitude was smaller because of the exis-
tence of the initial deformation during the fatigue test. However,
the initial deformation of the beams, whose sustained load was
small or zero, was small, and their vibration amplitude was great
during the fatigue test. The difference between the mid-span dis-
placements of the lower and upper limits of the fatigue load is
defined as the amplitude difference. The changes in the amplitude
difference and the number of cycles of the beams (from H1 to H5)
are shown in Fig. 6. As the figure shows, the amplitude difference
of beams H1, H2, and H3 was significantly greater than that of
beams H4 and H5 under the same number of cycles. However, if
the sustained load is too large, the steel of the test beam may be
damaged before the fatigue test. Therefore, the fatigue life of the
beam that sustained 60% load was less than that of the beams that
sustained 40% load. However, further research must be conducted
to determine the precise influence of the specific quantitative value
of the initial deflection on the fatigue life of the beam.
3.3. The relationship of fatigue life and mid-span deflection
development
The fatigue life and mid-span deflection curve of the test beams
are shown in Fig. 7(a)(d). As the figures show, the failure process
of the beams, whether strengthened with TRC or not, exhibited the
three stages. At the first stage, the concrete in the tension zone
showed cracks after being subjected to the first static load. At the
same time, the concrete in the cracks stopped working. The
scale-up of original cracks made the neutral axis shift up, and
new cracks appeared constantly. At the end of this stage, all the
cracks appeared. This stage was relatively short compared with
the entire life process of the strengthened beams. At the second
Fig. 5. The fatigue life of strengthened beams with sustained load and corrosion.
718 S. Jie et al. / Construction and Building Materials 131 (2017) 713720
Fig. 6. Amplitude difference.
stage, the deflection of the reinforced beams and the strain of each
material increased slightly. At this stage, some new and thin cracks
occurred. This stage occupied the largest proportion in the whole
process of fatigue damage. At the third stage, the mid-span deflec-
tion of the reinforced beams increased rapidly, and fatigue damage
occurred in a very short time. However, the third stage in the un-
reinforced beams was not obvious; they were destroyed suddenly.
In contrast, the beams strengthened with TRC had an obvious
increase in their deflection process, which served as a warning of
the beams damage.
Fig. 7. Fatigue life and mid-span deflection curves.
As Fig. 7(b) shows, under the same number of cycles, the mid-
span deflection of the beams that were subjected to a 40% sus-
tained load and those that were subjected to a 60% sustained load
was significantly smaller than that of the beams that were sub-
jected to a 20% sustained load. The reason was that the load sus-
tained by the beams was large at the soaking stage, which
resulted in their obvious deflection, which did not completely dis-
appear after unloading. Beams H4 and H5 had an initial deforma-
tion during the fatigue test, so their fatigue deformation was
smaller under fatigue loading. However, the load sustained by
beam H2 was smaller in the soaking stage, and the deformation
was smaller after uninstalling. Given the small initial deformation,
the deformation of beam H2 was larger during the fatigue loading.
The fatigue life and mid-span deflection comparison of beams
H1 and H6 are shown in Fig. 7(c). The figure shows that the mid-
span deflection of beam H1 was always smaller than that of beam
H6 at the same number of cycles, which indicates that the corro-
sion reduced the bending stiffness of the beam. In Fig. 7(d), a com-
parison of the fatigue life and mid-span deflection of beams H4, H5,
and H7 shows that the mid-span deflection values of beams H4 and
H5 were significantly smaller than those of beam H7 because the
pre-loading generated an unrecoverable deformation on the beam
and the deformation of the beam was small during the fatigue test.
The relationship between the residual deformation and fatigue
life under sustained load and corrosion is shown in Fig. 8. The fig-
ure shows that the residual deformation increased with an increase
in the number of cycles. According to the shape of the curves, the
three similar curves exhibited the stage when the value of the
curve slopes became larger and then smaller, which implied that
 S. Jie et al. / Construction and Building Materials 131 (2017) 713720 719

deflections was less than that of the beams with smaller initial
deflections. Because of the initial deformation of the steel bar,
there was an initial stress that occurred in the steel bar. Therefore,
the stress of the steel bar of beam H3 was larger than that of beam
H4 when the fatigue loading reached the maximum value. Namely,
the variation in the reinforcement stress amplitude of beam H3
was smaller than that of beam H4. Thus, the fatigue life of beam
H4 was longer than that of beam H3. As for beam H5, which sus-
tained a larger load, the steel was damaged seriously. Thus, the
fatigue life of beam H5 was less than that of beam H4.

3.5. Influence of erosion on the interface of TRC strengthening layer

and old concrete

Based on the fatigue test conducted on the eroded RC beams

reinforced with TRC, the reinforcement was separated from the
Fig. 8. Residual deflection diagram.
old concrete, as shown in Figs. 4(c) and Fig. 10. However, the above
phenomenon did not occur in the static load and fatigue tests with-
the increase in the speed of the residual deformation became lar- out corrosion and sustained load of beams strengthened with TRC,
ger, then smaller, regardless of the sustained load. as shown in Figs. 11 and 12. This result indicates that corrosion
weakens the bond between the reinforcement and old concrete
and adversely affects the RC beams reinforced with TRC.
3.4. Strain of steel bar with the number of cycles This study suggests that, in eliminating the stripping between
the TRC reinforcement and old concrete, the curing of reinforce-
A diagram of the relationship between the strain of the steel bar ment should be strengthened to reduce the shrinkage of cement-
and the number of cycles under maximum fatigue load is shown in based materials and that the anchorage length of TRC reinforce-
Fig. 9. The figure shows that the strain of the steel bar of beam H1 ment materials should be sufficient. If prefabricated TRC panels
was significantly larger than the other two beams under the same are adopted, a binder should be used in bonding the reinforcement
number of cycles. The strain of the steel bar of beam H3 was larger and old concrete. The method of planting bars can also be used to
than that of beam H4 under the same number of cycles. For one strengthen the anchorage performance of the reinforcement and
thing, the initial deflection of beam H4 was larger before the fati- old concrete.
gue test. For another, the data acquisition before the reinforcement
strain reset, namely, the reinforced strain values of the two beams
were the same when the loading was zero. When the load reached
the fatigue load limit value, the strain of the steel bar of beam H3
was larger than that of beam H4. This may result from the fact that
the vibration amplitude of beam H3 was larger than that of beam
H4.
Applying a sustained load on the beams can reduce their stiff-
ness and produce an initial deformation on the beams after unin-
stalling. Therefore, it can be inferred that the initial stiffness of
beam H3 was larger than that of beam H4. However, when fatigue
loading reached the maximum value, the strain of the steel bar of
beam H3 was larger than that of beam H4. This finding showed
that the change in the stiffness of the beams with larger initial

Fig. 10. The delamination of TRC layer.

Fig. 9. The diagram of steel strain and the number of cycles under max fatigue load. Fig. 11. Failure mode under static load.
720 S. Jie et al. / Construction and Building Materials 131 (2017) 713720
Fig. 12. Failure mode under fatigue load.
4. Conclusions
The following conclusions can be obtained from the results of
this study:
1) TRC controls the cracks in the reinforced concrete beams
well. Under the same conditions, the number of cracks in
the beams strengthened with TRC is greater than that in
the un-reinforced beams, but the spacing of the cracks in
the beams strengthened with TRC is less than that in the
unreinforced beams.
2) The crack development of the beams reinforced with TRC
undergoes three stages, but in the unreinforced beams, only
two stages occur. Beams reinforced with TRC have an obvi-
ous deformation stage before fatigue failure; whereas un-
reinforced beams do not.
3) The combined effect of corrosion and sustained load is
greater than either of them alone on weakening the fatigue
life of the specimens.
4) A certain range of initial deformation increases the beams
fatigue life with corrosion. The fatigue life of the beams with
40% sustained load corrosion is the largest, followed by
those with 60% and those with 20%.
5) The amplitude difference affects the fatigue life of the rein-
forced beams. The beams with smaller amplitude differences
have a longer fatigue life, but amplitude and fatigue life do
not have a linear relationship.
6) The beam reinforced with TRC exhibits the effects of corro-
sion and sustained load; the increasing speed of its residual
deflection follows an increasing and then decreasing trend.
7) Corrosion affects the bond performance of the reinforcement
and old concrete. Lateral horizontal cracks appear along the
interface between the reinforcement and old concrete after
conducting the fatigue test on the corroded beams rein-
forced with TRC.
Acknowledgement
The authors gratefully acknowledge the Fundamental Research
Funds for the Central Universities (2015XKMS013). The experi-
mental work described in this paper was conducted at the Jiangsu
Key Laboratory of Environmental impact and Structural Safety in
Civil Engineering in the China University of Mining and Technol-
ogy. Help during the testing from staffs and students at the Labo-
ratory are greatly acknowledged.
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