• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.641-648
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• 2009

Concrete structures become more common in railway systems with an advancement of high speed train technologies. As the service life of concrete structures increases, structural strengthening for concrete structures may be necessary. There are several typical strengthening techniques using steel plate and fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) materials, which have their own inherent shortcomings. In order to enhance greater durability and resistance to fire and other environmental attacks, basalt fiber material attracts engineer's attention due to its characteristics. This study investigates bonding performance of basalt fiber sheet as a structural strengthening material. Experimental variables include bond width, length and number of layer. From the bonding tests, there were three different types of bonding failure modes: debonding, rupture and rip-off. Among the variables, bond width indicated more significant effect on bonding characteristics. In addition the bond length did not contribute to bond strength in proportion to the bond length. Hence this study evaluated effective bond length and effective bond strength. The effective bond strength was compared to those suggested by other researches which used different types of FRP strengthening materials such as carbon FRP.