Strengthening of timber beams with textile-reinforced elastomers

Timber is one of the oldest and widely used construction material all over the world, thus there exists huge number of historical timber building. The main principle of preservation of historical timber buildings is minimum intervention and maximum retention of materials. At this point, instead of replacing, the retrofitting or strengthening of existing timber members by means of innovative techniques plays a vital role. Strengthening of existing structural members with Fiber Reinforced Polymers (FRP) has been widely used in the latter decades. In this study, a new strengthening method with textile-reinforced elastomers is introduced. The strengthening method consists of combined application of a glass fiber textile in open mesh configuration and a special sprayed elastomer to the outer surface of the structural member. Within the scope of the experimental program, unstrengthened and strengthened timber beams were tested to failure under four point bending. The strengthening method provided a notable enhancement of strength, stiffness and ductility of the timber beams.