Issue 48

V. P. Berardi et alii, Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 48 (2019) 222-229; DOI: 10.3221/IGF-ESIS.48.23 222 Cohesive fracture in composite systems: experimental setup and first results Valentino Paolo Berardi Department of Civil Engineering, University of Salerno, Via Giovanni Paolo II 132, Fisciano (SA), Italy berardi@unisa.it Michele Perrella, Gabriele Cricrì Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Salerno, Via Giovanni Paolo II 132, Fisciano (SA), Italy mperrella@unisa.it, gcricri@unisa.it A BSTRACT . Composite systems are widely used in many engineering applications for new structures and strengthening of existing ones. Within the structural rehabilitation of civil constructions, the plating technique of beams with Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) represents a quick and optimal intervention with respect to traditional ones. The failure of these composite systems usually occurs due to the FRP debonding, which corresponds to a mode II fracture of concrete specimens. In this paper, a new experimental setup for investigating the mode II fracture behavior of FRP-concrete composite structures is presented. The test equipment consists of both conventional equipment and a non-contact optical technique, Digital Image Correlation (DIC), and the test system was realized at the Design Machine Laboratory of the University of Salerno. A preliminary test was performed and the corresponding results are shown and discussed. K EYWORDS . Composite systems; Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP); Debonding; Mechanical testing; Digital Image Correlation (DIC). Citation: Berardi, V. P., Perrella, M., Cricrì, G., Cohesive fracture in composite systems: experimental setup and first results, Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 48 (2019) 222-229. Received: 11.12.2018 Accepted: 09.01.2019 Published: 01.04.2019 Copyright: © 2019 This is an open access article under the terms of the CC-BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. I NTRODUCTION dhesive junctions have become widely adopted for structural applications in many engineering fields, typically for realizing industrial, automotive, naval and aerospace high-tech structural elements [1, 2], as well as for rehabilitating existing civil structures (reinforced concrete and masonry structures) with external Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) reinforcements [3-12]. Within the field of Civil Engineering, the design of strengthening by bonding composite plates and sheets requires the evaluation of brittle and ductile failure modes, in order to achieve a controlled overall ductile behavior of the structure. Typical brittle failure modes are associated with debonding close to either FRP cut-off cross sections (end debonding) or A