Investigation of FRP reinforcement of historical masonry arches

Historical buildings convey the lifestyle and culture of the period in which they were built to the future. Various forms of masonry arches, which are used as carrier systems in historical buildings, are frequently seen in structures such as waterways, mosques, churches, aqueducts and baths. It is very important to protect and preserve these historical masonry arches, which reflect the culture and lifestyle of the period. These masonry arches may be damaged or destroyed due to negative factors such as human-caused damages, natural disasters, wars, and degradations in the properties of the materials over time. For this reason, it is important to repair or strengthen of masonry arches. In the repair and strengthening of historical masonry arches, methods such as supporting with scaffolds and tension arrangement are used. In the repair and strengthening process, there are two important factors. The first is that the material to be used for repair should not bring an additional load to the structure while the second is that if the structure to be strengthened is a historical one, the originality of the structure should not be corrupted. Repair and strengthening with Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) technique provides these two factors to a large extent. In this study, 10 arch samples (1 reference and 9 strengthened) were prepared. Then, all samples were kept for 28 days, and the samples to be strengthened were coated with three carbon, three aramid (kevlar) and three glass fiber fabric (FRP) by using epoxy to cover the two lower bricks of the arches abdomen and springer stone. After this process, the strengthened arches samples were kept for 7 more days and tested. As a result of the experiments, the load-displacement graphs of the samples were drawn with the help of Excel program. The maximum load value of the reference sample is 6.49 kN, the average maximum load value obtained from the samples strengthened with carbon fiber fabric is 10.18 kN, the average maximum load value obtained from the samples strengthened with aramid fiber fabric is 14.20 kN and the average maximum load value obtained from the samples strengthened with glass fiber fabric is 13.09 kN. The maximum load value among the strengthened arches samples was obtained from aramid fiber fabric.