In a study conducted by the writers at The University of Ari-
zona, the effectiveness of CFRP patches for repairing damaged
steel beams was investigated ~Tavakkolizadeh and Saadatmanesh
2001b!. A total of eight small-scale S12734.5 steel beams were
tested. The tension flanges of six beams were cut thoroughly with
two different depths of 3.2 and 6.4 mm, then beams were repaired
by CFRP patches with different lengths. A four-point bending test
was performed using the displacement control loading regime and
several unloading and reloading cycles were performed before
failure of the beam. In order to avoid lateral instability, the top
flanges of the beams were braced using turnbuckle and high
strength steel cables at third points and the beam was clamped
down at the supports. Increases in ultimate load-carrying capacity
of 145% and 63% for the beams with 80% and 40% loss of
tension flange area were reported, respectively. The stiffness of
the damaged beam after patching was recovered to 95% the origi-
nal stiffness. The different modes of failures that were observed in
the experiments were end peeling and delamination. They indi-
cated that the drawbacks of this technique included the loss of
ductility and the possibility of galvanic corrosion between the
CFRP plate and steel.