Concrete protective arches reinforced with BFRP bars: Construction and quasi-static structural performances

Abstract

To construct corrosion resistant protective underground arches in waterfront structural engineering, steel bars are replaced by basalt fiber reinforced polymer (BFRP) bars and hybrid BFRP-steel bars. Eight semi-circular arches reinforced with steel bars, BFRP bars and BFRP-steel bars were casted. Quasi-static compression experiments were performed to evaluate the structural performances of the arches, including the deformation types, the failure modes and the ultimate loading capacities. Although the composite bars are linear elasticity, the concrete arches reinforced with composite bars behave as elastic-plastic deformation. The arches have typical flexural failure mode when the failure is determined by the crushing of the compressed concrete. Meanwhile, some of them exhibit brittle failure when the vault of the arch is sheared to fracture. Compared with the steel bars reinforced arches (SBRAs), the BFRP bars reinforced arches (BBRAs) have comparable ductility and ultimate loading capacity. An analytical method of the structure, including the coupling effects of bending moment, axial force, and shear force, was proposed to predict the load capacity of the SBRAs and BBRAs. The results show that the new proposed analytical method can capture the experimental results with acceptable errors. According to the experiments and analytical results, the BBRAs with excellent corrosion resistance can be treated as a replacement of SBRAs in waterfront underground protective structures.