Abstract
This study investigated the performance of recycled waste fishing net sheets (WSs) as a sustainable strengthening material for reinforced concrete (RC) slabs. The primary challenge addressed is the debonding failure caused by the low bond strength at the WS-to-concrete interface. To analyze this, two full-scale RC slabs-one with and one without strengthening-were cast and tested under a four-point bending setup. Finite element (FE) models incorporating existing bond-slip laws were developed using the ABAQUS software to simulate the strengthened slab's behavior. A sensitivity analysis was performed to assess the impact of bond-slip parameters on the failure mechanism. Experimental results indicated that the WS-strengthened slab enhanced the RC slab capacities by 15% in yield load and 13% in initial stiffness. Furthermore, the maximum shear stress of 0.5τ(max) or interfacial fracture energy of 0.2G(f), compared to values proposed by Monti et al., enabled the simulation of the global response observed in the experiment.