Reliability Analysis of Bond Behaviour of CFRP⁻Concrete Interface under Wet⁻Dry Cycles

Effective bonding between adherents plays a key role in retrofitting concrete structures in civil engineering using fibre-reinforced polymers (FRPs). To ensure structural safety, it is critical to develop design codes, which account for uncertainties of materials, the environment, and load, to estimate bond behaviour under long-term exposure to harsh environments. Therefore, a reliability analysis was performed to study the bond behaviour of FRP⁻concrete interface under wet⁻dry cycles and sustained loading. Thirty double-lap, shear-bonded carbon FRP (CFRP)⁻concrete composite specimens were tested after wet⁻dry cycles and sustained loading exposure. The fracture energy G_f of the bond behavior between CFRP and concrete was directly obtained from the measured local bond-slip curves. Five widely used test methods were adopted to verify the possible distribution types of G_f. Based on the best fit distribution of G_f, a reliability index β was then calculated for the specimens. The effects of wet⁻dry exposure and sustained loading on β were analysed separately. The effects of the mean and standard deviation of the load on β were compared. It was found that the mean had a greater impact on reliability than the standard deviation, but neither changed the regulation of the exponential reduction of β with increasing wet⁻dry cycle time. Their impact was significant for a small number of wet⁻dry cycles but insignificant for more than 4000 wet⁻dry cycles.