Behaviour of coupling beams retrofitted with advanced cementitious composites : experiments and modelling

The main aim of this work is to assess the effectiveness of upgrading and/or retrofitting of coupling beams with High Performance Fibre Reinforced Cementitious Composites (HPFRCC) and Textile Reinforced Cementitious Composites (TRCC). The coupling beam specimen is conceived to be “poorly designed”, only complying with minimum reinforcement requirements for non seismic situations. To this purpose a dedicated experimental testing setup had to be designed, as explained in detail hereafter, and 14 specimens were tested. The performance of the coupling beams, both non retrofitted and/or retrofitted/upgraded were tested under both monotonic and cyclic loadings, highlighting the effectiveness of the proposed strengthening techniques as well as of research needs which still needs to be fulfilled for a application into engineering practice.