Wood beam repairing with carbon-epoxy composites

Abstract

Wood damaged beams submitted to bending loads were repaired using carbon-epoxy patches. The effect of patch thickness as well as adhesive filleting were both studied experimentally and numerically. The objective was to verify the influence of these aspects on the strength and failure of the repaired structural components. Cohesive zone modeling considering mixedmode (I+II) loading was carried out to simulate the observed experimental behavior. It was concluded that repair can successful recover the original bearing capacity, although patch thickness and adhesive filleting did not reveal a significant gain on strength.