A change in use at this facility meant a section of the structure needed to carry significantly higher floor loading than it was originally designed for. Rather than a full structural rebuild — which would have meant extended shutdown and major cost — CFRP strengthening was assessed as viable, provided the load path checked out member by member.
Our engineers ran a load-path assessment across the affected bay, confirming that 38 beams and columns needed additional flexural or shear capacity, and that the load these members would carry could be traced through the existing structure without downstream members also being under-capacity. Members that would have simply shifted the deficiency elsewhere were flagged for separate review rather than included in the CFRP scope.
Substrate preparation was grit-blasted (not just ground) to achieve proper bond, with moisture content checked against the epoxy manufacturer's tolerance before application. Carbon fibre sheets were bonded to the tension faces of beams and around columns in a wrapping configuration, with mechanical anchorage and U-wraps detailed at all termination points to prevent end-peeling — the most common failure mode in CFRP retrofits that skip this detail.
All 38 members were completed with each strengthened element load-tested against its new design capacity before handover. The retrofit added negligible dead load to the structure and required no reduction in headroom or floor area — the two main advantages that made CFRP the right call here over jacketing or section enlargement.
