The EBR strengthening technique has been used to improve existing reinforced concrete (RC) structures. In many cases CFRP laminates are used as reinforcing material, whereas epoxy adhesives are used as the bonding agent. In the last decades several investigations have been carried out in order to predict the bond strength of EBR CFRP systems in concrete and, as consequence of that, many analytical expressions can be found out in the literature, including in standards. However, these expressions do not account for the influence of the type of surface preparation, which is a mandatory and critical task in the strengthening application. The present work gives contributions for this lake of knowledge. For this purpose an experimental program composed of single shear lap bond tests was carried out. The main parameters studied were the type of surface preparation and the bond length. The instrumentation included sensors to measure the pullout force and the loaded and free end slips. This paper details the experimental program, presents and analyzes the obtained results. As expected, the results revealed that the bond strength depends on the type of surface preparation. Finally, existing expressions in the literature were upgraded in order to account for the type of surface preparation in the estimation of the bond strength.This work was supported by FEDER funds through the Operational Program for Competitiveness
Factors – COMPETE and National Funds through FCT (Portuguese Foundation for Science and
Technology) under the project FRPLongDur POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016900 (FCT PTDC/ECMEST/1282/2014)
and partly financed by the project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007633. The authors also
like to thank the S&P Clever Reinforcement Ibérica Lda. company for providing the materials.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio