ABSTRACT
The considerable age of many prestressed concrete (PC) bridges conjointly with a steadily increasing amount of traffic and changes in design concepts have made maintenance and retrofitting more and more important over the years. The prestressed carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) strengthening is an effective reinforcement method for deteriorative bridges. A total of four PC beams with a length of 4300 mm were tested via four-point bending test. One beam was not strengthened and served as the reference beam, and three beams were strengthened by prestressed CFRP tendons with different diameters (7 mm and 10 mm) and initial prestress levels (15%, 30% and 50%). The promising results showed that the self-designed mechanical devices and end anchorage of CFRP tendons worked well. The ultimate load of strengthened beams was increased by 31%, 39% and 54%, respectively, compared with that of reference beam.
