During the development of advanced
materials in 1990s, use of Fibre Reinforced Polymer (FRP)
sheet as material to strengthen structural members replacing
steel plate is becoming popular due to its high corrosive
resistance and high strength-to-weight-ratio [1][2]. Recently,
use of FRP rod using NSM technique to strengthen RC beams
has been introduced [3][4].The effectiveness of using FRP rod
with NSM technique in strengthening structural members also
has been studied by Tang et al, (2006) as in [5].
Comprehensive review on the effectiveness of NSM technique
for strengthening RC beams was reported by De Lorenzis and
Teng (2007), as in [3]. Unlike using externally bonded (EB)
FRP laminates or wet laid-up sheets, the NSM technique was
found to be cheaper as not all surfaces of structural member are
covered. The comparison in terms of flexural behaviour
between RC beams strengthened with externally bonded (EB)
FRP sheets and those with NSM FRP rods appeared to have
not been widely elaborated in literature except few studies
reported by Foret and Limam (2007), as in [6]. Therefore, the
present investigation aims to compare the flexural behaviour of
RC beams strengthened with FRP rods using NSM technique
with those strengthen with EB FRP sheets. The effect on the
number of layers of CFRP sheets and number of NSM GFRP
rods used for the strengthened RC beams to be also looked
into.