SUMMARY

The need to retrofit existing structures is becoming ever more frequent. However, research in 
this area is rather limited, especially in the field of strengthening and repairing reinforced 
(RC) columns.

Columns sustain the entire weight of a building structure, so any deficiency in their behaviour 
involves the risk of total collapse. Furthermore, considering that a high proportion of the 
defects in building structures are detected in the columns themselves, it is obvious the 
problem that involves the lack of recommendations for design and calculation, as well as 
research related to the strengthening of RC columns.

The technique of strengthening RC columns by steel angles and strips is widely used, and 
very little research has been carried out on the behaviour of RC columns strengthened by this 
technique. As can be seen, the importance of studying this strengthening technique is 
apparent. With this purpose, the research “Experimental and numerical study of axially and 
eccentrically loaded reinforced concrete columns strengthened by steel profiles” has been 
carried out. This research has been funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology of 
Spain from the research project MAT 2003-08075, co-financed with FEDER funds. This 
research has been carried out at the Institute of Science and Technology of Concrete 
(ICITECH) of the Technical University of Valencia.

This Thesis is included in the research project described in last paragraph, and the objective is 
to study the behaviour of axially loaded reinforced concrete columns strengthened by steel 
angles and strips.

It also studied the behaviour of the beam-column joint, analyzing different ways of solving 
the joint.

Based on the results obtained, a design rule is proposed to provide a means of estimating the 
ultimate load of columns strengthened by this technique and recommendations are given 
concerning the design of the strengthening.