Concrete beams strengthened with aluminum honeycomb composite panels

Reinforced concrete beams must be reinforced when they are subjected to higher loads or when the bending forces are higher than their bending resistence. In this study, the strengthening of the beam against bending forces were investigated. Especially recently, various studies have been carried out with different materials on the strengthening of the beams. In this study, aluminum honeycomb composite panel was used for reinforcement. The structure of the honeycomb composite panels consists of a light and honeycomb core area placed between the two surfaces. For the experimental study, eight beams were prepared, three of them were non-reinforced used as reference and the five beams were reinforced. The beams were prepared in the laboratory as 150 * 250 mm in dimensions and 2400 mm in length. The reinforced beams were prepared by bonding them with epoxy based adhesive on the beam with three different thicknesses of the composite panel. Two of the reinforced beams were prepared by bonding with a polyurethane-based adhesive on the beam with two different thicknesses of the composite panel. In this study, it was aimed to reveal the effect of changing in panel thickness and different adhesive on strengthening. The prepared beams were subjected to four point bending test. It has been determined that the use of aluminum honeycomb composite panels increases the maximum load by 25% to 40% that the beams can carry. In addition, it has been determined that the adhesive type is important in strengthening of the beams. The results of this experiment suggest that the aluminum honeycomb composite panels have very promising results in terms of strengthening the beams and they might be used.