A fracture-based interface model for simulating the bond behaviour of FRP strips glued to a brittle substrate

The present paper deals with the bond behaviour of Fibre Reinforced Polymer (FRP) laminates glued to brittle substrates. Based on a similar proposal already available in the scientific literature for discrete-crack analyses on plain concrete, this work formulates a numerical model completely conceived within the general framework of Fracture Mechanics and plasticity-based concepts. This is the key novel aspect of the proposed work, whereas, as a matter of fact, the most common proposals and theoretical models available in the scientific literature and adopted for describing the bond behaviour of FRP-to-brittle adhesive joints are generally based on assuming "a priori" the analytical expression of the interface bond-slip law. Numerical applications demonstrate the soundness of the proposed formulation and show a very good agreement with experimental results of FRP-to-concrete bond-slip tests. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.