F3B02

Effect of Adhesive Viscoelasticity on the Creep Behaviour of FRP

Strengthened Concrete Beams
Ehab Hamed
Lecturer., Center for Infrastructure Engineering and Safety, School of Civil and Environmental
Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

ABSTRACT
This paper focuses on the effect of the viscoelasticity of the adhesive layer on the flexural
creep response of reinforced concrete beams strengthened with composite materials. A
theoretical model is developed, which considers the strengthened beam as a layered
structure that consists of the reinforced concrete beam, the adhesive layer, and the FRP strip,
and accounts for the creep of each component. The model also accounts for cracking and
tension-stiffening of the reinforced concrete and for the deformability of the adhesive layer
in shear and through its thickness, which allows the evaluation of the edge and interfacial
stresses. A parametric study of different viscoelastic material properties of the adhesive is
presented, and their effect on the time variation of the internal forces and edge stresses is
investigated.

KEYWORD
Adhesive, Composite materials, Concrete, Creep, FRP, Strengthening, Viscoelasticity

1. INTRODUCTION
Reinforced concrete (RC) structures are subjected
to different types of loads through their service life.
A major part of these loads can be classified as
sustained loads, which lead to creep of the
concrete material and to time-dependent cracking
and increase in the curvature of the structure. In
some cases, strengthening or upgrading of
structures to resist additional sustained loads is
required, where creep of the concrete and
potentially of the strengthening system take place.
Also in most other cases of strengthening, the
strengthening system is applied to a concrete
structure that creeps continuously with time.
Hence, there is a need to investigate the long-term
time-dependent effects in strengthened members.
Externally bonded composite materials in the form
of fibre reinforced polymers (FRP) are being used
for the strengthening of concrete and masonry
structures, with their effect on the strength,
stiffness, ductility, durability, and dynamic
performance of the strengthened member being
widely investigated [1-3]. However, little research
has hitherto been published on the creep behaviour
of strengthened members. Along with the creep of
the concrete, most adhesives used for structural
strengthening exhibit some level of viscoelastic
response that is different from that of concrete and
may affect the structural performance. Above all,
creep in FRP strengthened beams may lead to
time-dependent variation of the interfacial
stresses, which may initiate premature debonding
failures, or it may modify the magnitudes of the
stresses transferred to the FRP strip with time.
Understanding and clarifying theses aspects,
which
highlight
various
analytical
and
computational challenges, are required for a better
design of FRP strengthened members.
Only few research studies have focused on the
creep effects in FRP strengthened beams [4-7].
The existing studies describe experimental results
and present simplified theoretical models that
focus on the global behaviour, but do not consider
the localized stress concentrations at the adhesive
interfaces and do not account for the viscoelastic
response of the adhesive. In addition, only
approximate cracking models that are based on the
effective modulus method were developed.
An incremental formulation for the analysis of
strengthened beams that is based on modelling the
concrete material by a generalized Maxwell chain

was developed in [8]. However, the creep of the

adhesive layer was not considered and the model
does not address the local effects. Benyoucef et al.
[9] developed a theoretical model for studying the
effect of creep on the adhesive stresses in
strengthened beams considering the creep in
concrete only. However, the model assumes that
the stresses in the adhesive layer do not change
through its thickness, which does not fulfill the
material point level (continuum) equilibrium in the
adhesive and does not fulfill the stress free
boundary condition at the edges [10]. Further
studies that focused on the creep behaviour of the
FRP-concrete interface were reported by Wu and
Diab [11,12] and Meshgin et al. [13], which
revealed the stress redistribution caused by the
differences between the creep characteristics of the
Epoxy adhesive to those of the concrete. The
models developed in [11,12] account for the stress
-slip response at the interface, but they have not
accounted for the development of stresses through
the thickness of the adhesive layer, which play
important roles in the debonding mechanisms [14].
Hamed and Bradford [15-17] developed general
theoretical models that model the strengthened
beam as a layered structure that consists of the RC
beam, the adhesive layer, and the FRP strip. The
models account for the deformability and the
viscoelasticity of the adhesive layer in shear and
through its thickness. They also account for
cracking and tension-stiffening in the reinforced
concrete and are capable of describing the
structural behaviour through a step-by-step time
analysis. Unlike the detailed models developed by
Wu and Diab [11,12], which focused on the
debonding slip failures and the developing length
at the interfaces, [15-17] focused on the structural
behaviour before failure with capabilities to
evaluate the edge shear and vertical normal
stresses at the different interfaces, and to describe
the crack propagation of the concrete in time and
its influence on the stresses transferred to the FRP.
It was shown in [15,16] that the distribution and
magnitudes of the edge stresses vary significantly
when a viscoelastic adhesive is involved.
Nevertheless, only one type of viscoelastic
adhesive was investigated. The aim of this paper is
to provide further insight into the creep response
of FRP strengthened members by examining a
broad range of viscoelastic adhesives. For this a
parametric study of the influence of the adhesive
viscoelastic characteristics on the structural
response is conducted.

time analysis. For this, the relaxation functions are

expanded into Dirichlet series as follows:

2. MATHEMATICAL MODEL
The mathematical model follows the model
developed in Hamed and Bradford [17], which
considers the strengthened beam as a sandwich
structure and uses the lamination theory with first
order shear deformation for the modelling of the
FRP laminates, and Timoshenkos shear theory for
modelling the RC beam. The adhesive layer is
modelled as two dimensional continuum with
shear and vertical normal rigidities, while its
in-plane longitudinal rigidity is neglected with
respect to that of the RC beam and the FRP. The
assembly of the structural components into the
whole structure is achieved through equilibrium,
compatibility and continuity requirements. For
each component, it is assumed that the stress and
deformation fields are uniform through the width.
The model accounts for cracking and tension
-stiffening, which are introduced by a smeared
cracking model through the constitutive relations
of the concrete. The sign conventions for the
coordinates, deformations, loads, stresses and
stress resultants are shown in Figure. 1.
X cr2

X cr1
z rc ,wrcx,u orc u a

c.g

za ,wa

uofrp
zfrp,wfrp L

xxc

zs

Yrc
b

mx
nx

qz

ft

s
2

da
dfrp

rc

M xx
rc

RC Beam Vxx

Adhesive
Layer
FRP Strip

frp

frp
xx

mis

Rxzi (t ) Rxzi (t ) Gi e
1

Mfrp
xx

Nxx

Fig.1 Geometry, loads, sign conventions, and

stress resultants
A rheological model that is based on the
generalized Maxwell chain is used for the
viscoelastic modelling of the different materials,
which was presented by Baant and Wu [18] in its
incremental form that is suitable for a step-by-step

Ei

(1)

t Tis

Gi

(2)

where the i= rc, frp, a superscripts refer to the RC

beam, FRP strip, and the adhesive layer,
respectively; Rxxi and Rxzi are the normal and shear
relaxation functions respectively, Rxxi and Rxzi
are approximated relaxation functions, Ei and
Gi are the moduli of the th Hookean spring for

the modelling in the normal and shear directions

respectively, min and mis are the number of units in
each direction, Tin and Tis are the relaxation
times of the th unit in each direction, and Ei
and Gi are the moduli of the min+1 and mis+1
Hookean spring respectively, that are not coupled
to any dashpot.
For the RC beam, strain-dependent Maxwell
constants that simulate the effects of cracking and
tension-stiffening at the material level are
implemented herein. Thus, with the evolution of
damage, the spring and dashpot constants for each
point through the depth of the section are updated.
The incremental analysis requires the time of
concern t to be subdivided into nt discrete times
with tr = tr tr-1 (r = 1,2,nt). The incremental
constitutive relations are based on a numerical
time integration assuming a constant strain rate at
each time increment [18]. For the adhesive
material, they take the following form:

zza (tr ) zza (tr ) Ea (tr ) a (tr )

(3)

(tr ) (tr ) Ga (tr ) a (tr )

(4)

a
xz

a
(x,da)
xz

zza (x,da)

t Tin

rc
Nxx

a (x,0)
xz

zza (x,0)

min

Rxxi (t ) Rxxi (t ) Ei e

a
xz

where zza and zza are the vertical normal stress

and strain in the adhesive later; xza and xza are
the shear stress and engineering shear strain; Ea
and Ga are the pseudo normal and shear moduli,
and a and a are the incremental
prescribed normal creep and shear strains
respectively. These are given as follows:

G(t ) 1 e
m an

Ea(tr ) 1 e

t r Tan

1
m as

t r Tas

T
T

an

tr Ea Ea (5)

as

tr Ga Ga (6)


1
(t )
1 e
G(t )

a(tr )

1 man
t
1 e r
Ea(tr ) 1
m as

t r Tas

Tan

(t
(t
a

(7)

(8)

r 1

r 1

The constitutive relations of the concrete follow

the procedure outlined above and take the form of
Eqs. (3-8) with subscript/superscript c instead of a,
and xx instead of zz. The constitutive relations of
the RC beam at the section level take the
following form:
N xxc A11
c
M xx B11
c
Vxx 0

0 uoc,x Ncr

D11
0 c, x M cr (11)

0 A55 wc,x c Vcr

B11

where A11
, B11
, D11
and A55
are the extensional,
extensional-bending,
flexural,
and
shear
viscoelastic rigidities of the RC beam including
the effect of cracking and tension-stiffening, Ncr,
Mcr and Vcr are incremental effective forces that
result from creep. The determination of the
effective rigidities is achieved via an iterative
procedure, which is not provided here [15,17].
The effects of aging and shrinkage of the concrete
material are ignored because strengthening is
usually applied for old concrete structures. They
are also ignored in the adhesive and the composite
laminates as the short time-scale for which these
effects occur is not of concern.
Because of the limited experimental data available
to calibrate the relaxation modulus owing to the
fact that relaxation tests are more difficult to
conduct than creep tests, the relaxation modulus is
generated here based on the compliance function
(J). In general, this is achieved through the
following expression [19] in the normal direction
for example:
t

J (t ) R ( )d t
i

(11)

The compliance function in the normal direction

of the concrete takes the following form based on
the recommendations of ACI Committee-209 [20]:
1 (t )
(12)
J c (t )
Ec ( xxc )
where Ec is the modulus of elasticity that depends
on the longitudinal strain due to cracking, and (t)
is the creep coefficient, which is evaluated based
on the age of loading to as follows:
t ( 0.118)
(13)
(t ) 1.25
t
u
o
c t

in which and c are parameters that control the

creep coefficient, u is the final creep coefficient,
and the times t and to are measured in days.
Knowing the compliance function of the concrete,
Bazant and Kim [21] suggested the use of an
approximated expression for obtaining the
relaxation modulus, which takes the following
form when aging is not considered:
1
(14)
R c (t ) c o
J (t )
in which o 0.008. The spring moduli in the
normal direction are then determined via Eq. (1)
using the least squares method. Due to the lack of
data on the creep behaviour of concrete in shear, it
is assumed that Poissons ratio c is constant with
time, and so, the spring moduli in shear are
determined as Gc Ec 2(1 c ) , while the
relaxation times and number of units are assumed
as the ones in the normal direction.
The compliance functions of the adhesive follow a
power law [19] and take the following form in the
normal direction:
1
(15)
J a (t )
Sat n
Ea
where Sa and n are determined to fit a test data.
The relaxation modulus is given as [22]:
j

(1) j t jn S a Ea (1 n)
(16)
R a (t ) Ea
(1 jn)
j 0
where is the gamma function. The Poissons
ratio is assumed constant with time, and the
rheological modelling in shear is derived from that
in the normal direction or vice versa.
The FRP laminate is assumed linear elastic in this
paper because many of the fibres (Glass, Carbon)
used for civil engineering applications are linear
elastic, and the contribution of the potential
viscoelasticity of the matrix to the overall
viscoelasticity of the laminate is negligible [15].
Using the incremental approach briefly described
above along with the compatibility requirements at
the interfaces, and the stress and deformation
fields of the adhesive layers, the governing
incremental field equations can be formulated,
which for brevity are not presented here. They are
stated in terms of the unknown deformations and
rotations, (wc, wfrp, uoc, uofrp, c, frp), and the
unknown shear stress at the adhesive (a)
following [15].

5. NUMERICAL STUDY

240

Ec=31GPa
Ea= 2.6GPa
Efrp = 160GPa

280

A symmetric simply supported strengthened RC

beam is examined. The span of the beam is 3.0m
and the distance from the support to the edge of
the FRP strip is 250mm. The cross-section and
elastic moduli of the materials appear in Fig. 2.
The beam is assumed to be strengthened at the age
of t0 = 15 years with an additional uniformly
distributed sustained load of 15kN/m applied after
strengthening. The modulus of elasticity of the
concrete is determined based on its compressive
strength at that age, which is taken as fc
=37.62MPa. The tensile strength and Poisson ratio
are taken as ft = 3.91MPa and c = 0.17,
respectively [20]. The following values are
adopted for the parameters that control the creep
behaviour of concrete (Eq. 13): = 0.6, c = 10
days, u = 2.35. The Epoxy adhesive is assumed to
be linear viscoelastic with Sa = 0.048GPa1(day)n,
n = 0.4, a Poisson ratio of 0.3, and a thickness of
3.0mm. These values are obtained based on
experimental results reported in [23]. A CFRP
laminate of 1.2 mm thickness is used.

216
150
200

Fig. 2 Cross-section and material properties

The time response of the beam is studied hereafter.
For reference, the distributions of the
instantaneous (i.e. t = 0) axial forces, and the shear
and vertical normal stresses at the adhesive
interfaces along the beam are shown in Figure 3.
The results show the magnified increase in the
axial forces at the cracked region that is
determined between x = 680 mm to 2319 mm.
Within the cracked region, the axial force in the
internal steel reinforcement is larger than that
developed in the FRP because the former has a
larger axial rigidity and a shorter lever arm. The
peak axial forces in the FRP and steel
reinforcement equal 12.7 kN and 26.6 kN
respectively. Figures 3b and 3c show the shear and
vertical normal stress concentrations near the
edges of the adhesive layer, which are responsible
for the debonding failure mechanisms observed in
many studies.

Fig. 3 Instantaneous response

Different values of Sa and n (Eq. 15) with respect
to the reference values are examined, in order to
investigate the effect of the adhesive
viscoelasticity. Figure 4 shows the time variation
of the axial force in the FRP at mid-span and the
peak shear stress at the adhesive interfaces. The
results are normalized with respect to the
instantaneous response. It can be seen that there is
an increase with time of the axial force in the FRP
due to creep regardless of the viscoelastic
properties of the adhesive. For brevity, the time
variation of the vertical deflection is not presented
here, but it exhibits the same response as the axial
force, yet with slightly higher peak normalized
deflection of 1.62 instead of 1.42 (as shown in
Figure 4a). However, the time variation of the
interfacial edge shear stresses in the adhesive layer

exhibits significantly different behaviour to that of

the axial forces, which highly depends on the
viscoelastic characteristics of the adhesive. For
brevity, the time variation of the vertical normal
stresses is not presented here, as it exhibits almost
the same trend as seen in Figure 4b.
In the case of elastic adhesive (Sa = 0), the
increase in the deformations and curvature due to
the creep of concrete is associated with an increase
in the axial force and in the interfacial shear
stresses as well. This is because once the concrete
beam undergoes creep deformations, the
strengthening system tends to restrain its
deflections, which is interpreted by an increase in
the composite action (the moment carried in terms
of tension in the FRP and compression in the
beam) and an increase in the axial force and the
adhesive edge stresses. Unlike other studies [4,5]
that estimated a possible considerable increase of
the deflections of strengthened RC beams due to
the viscoelasticity of the adhesive, it is shown here
and in [15-17] that this increase is almost
independent on the viscoelastic properties of the
adhesive. In other words, the creep deformation
and curvature induced by the creep of the adhesive
layer are negligible compared to those induced by
the concrete itself. This is because the volume
ratio between the adhesive layer to that of the
concrete beam is very small. Variations in the
distribution of the shear stresses with time due to
the adhesive viscoelasticity were reported in [15],
but it appears that the integrated effect will still
increase the axial forces and deformation to the
same level. Thus, the global creep response of
FRP strengthened RC beams is dominated by the
concrete creep.
On the other hand, it can be seen in Figure 4b that
the time variation of the edge stresses is
significantly affected by the viscoelasticity of the
adhesive. During the first few months since first
loading where the rate of creep of the concrete is
high, there is an increase in the edge stresses.
Following this, the rate of creep of the concrete
becomes relatively small while that of the
adhesive is still high, which leads to a relaxation
of the edge stresses although there is an ongoing
increase in the axial force. Further explanation
regarding the rate of creep of the materials is
found in the subsequent following Figure 6.
It can be seen in Figure 4b that for the case of
elastic adhesive (Sa = 0), creep of the concrete
leads to a significant increase in the edge stresses

(1.65 times the instantaneous ones), which may

initiate debonding failures over time although the
structure may be subjected to sustained loads that
are less than its short-term failure loads. However,
the long-term stresses can be even smaller than the
instantaneous ones as can be seen for Sa = 0.072
GPa1(day)n. Thus, the use of viscoelastic
adhesives can prevent time-dependent failures by
releasing such stresses concentrations at the edges.

Fig. 4 : Normalized creep response with n = 0.4:

(a) Peak FRP axial force; (b) Peak shear stress at
the adhesive [Legend: -.-.- Sa = 0; - - - Sa = 0.024;
_____
Sa = 0.048; . . . . Sa = 0.072 (Sa in
1
GPa (day)n)]
The structural response with Sa = 0.048
GPa1(day)n and various values of n is shown in
Figure 5. Also here, variations of n do not affect
the peak axial force and deformations, but they do
affect the edge stresses. It is seen that because of
the dominant effect of the creep of concrete, weak
viscoelastic adhesives (n = 0.1) may not
necessarily lead to an overall release of the edge
stresses. This behaviour depends on many
parameters, but it was found here that it can be
approximated based on the ratio between the rate
of the normalized compliance function (creep rate)
of the adhesive to that of the concrete. The rates of
the normalized compliance functions are:

a
c
d J (t )
d J (t )
J c (t ) c
; J a (t ) a
dt J (0)
dt J (0) (17)
with Jc(t) and Ja(t) being defined by Eqs. (12) and
(15), respectively.

It can be seen in Figure 6 that the ratio between

the two compliance rates is always less than one
for n = 0.1 (concrete dominates). For higher values
of n, it becomes greater than one after specific
times. Such behaviour provides an indication and
an explanation to cases where the viscoelasticty of
the adhesive can lead to a decrease with time of
the edge stresses, when the rate of normalized
creep of the adhesive is greater than that of
concrete (see Figure 5b).

shear and vertical normal stresses in the adhesive

layer at the edges. These stresses initiate
debonding failures, and their increase in time due
to creep is of critical importance for the design of
strengthened beams. Yet, it has also been shown
that creep of the adhesive layer leads to a
reduction in the interfacial adhesive edge stresses
with negligible effect upon the deformations and
axial forces. This release in the stresses highly
depends upon the viscoelastic characteristics of
the adhesive. Thus, in some cases, viscoelastic
adhesives may have a favourable effect on the
behaviour of strengthened beams.
In conclusion, the analytical model developed here
sets a theoretical platform for the creep modelling
and analysis of concrete structures strengthened
with composite materials, and for further and more
advanced models that account for debonding and
creep rupture of the materials involved to be
developed.

Fig. 6: Normalized rate of the compliance function

of the adhesive with respect to that of the concrete.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Fig. 5: Normalized creep response with Sa = 0.048
GPa1(day)n: (a) Peak FRP axial force; (b) Peak
shear stress at the adhesive [Legend: -.-.- n =
0.1; . . . . n = 0.2; - - - n = 0.3; _____ n = 0.4].

The work reported in this paper was supported by

the Australian Research Council (ARC) through a
Discovery Project awarded to the author.

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This study has shown that the creep behaviour of
FRP strengthened beams is associated with
physical phenomena that some of which cannot be
observed and predicted using the existing models.
It has been shown that creep of the concrete beam
leads to a significant increase in the axial force in
the FRP laminate, as well as an increase in the

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