Abstract
Recent developments indicate that the application of pultruded FRP profiles has been continuously growing in the construction industry. Generating more complex structures composed of pultruded FRP profiles requires joining them. In particular, I-shape glass fiber pultruded profiles are commonly used and the possible joints to connect them should be specifically studied. The mechanical behavior of adhesively and bolted joints for pultruded Glass FRP (GFRP) profiles has been experimentally addressed and numerically modeled. A total of nine specimens with different configurations (bolted joints, adhesive joints, web joints, web and flange joints, and two different angles between profiles) were fabricated and tested, extending the available published information. The novelty of the research is in the direct comparison of joint technologies (bolted vs. adhesive), joint configuration (web vs. flange + web) and angles between profiles in a comprehensive way. Plates for flange joints were fabricated with carbon fiber FRP. Experimental results indicate that adding the bolted flange connection allowed for a slight increase of the load bearing capacity (up to 15%) but a significant increase in the stiffness (between 2 and 7 times). Hence, it is concluded that using carbon FRP bolted flange connection should be considered when increasing the joint stiffness is sought. Adhesively connections only reached 25% of the expected shear strength according to the adhesive producer if comparing the numerically calculated shear strength at the failure time with the shear strength capacity of the adhesive. Apart from assessing adhesive connections, the implemented 3D numerical model was aimed at providing a simplified effective tool to effectively design bolted joints. Although the accurate fitting between experimental and numerical results of the mechanical response, especially the stiffness of the joint, the local failure experimentally observed was not automatically represented by the model, because of the simplified definition of the materials oriented to make the model available for a wide range of practitioners.
Highlights
The first use of fiber reinforced polymer dated back thirty years ago, and nowadays, FRP material is employed by many engineers, technician and architects in order to strengthen and reinforce concrete structures [1–5]
Keller et al [10] reported that pultruded FRP materials that were used in bridge and building constructions remained effective up to 17 years after installation
Moving from FRP to the particular case of Glass FRP (GFRP), several experimental, analytical and numerical studies [31,32], were conducted on GFRP connections and the results showed that some parameters were especially relevant: fiber orientation, geometric parameters, hole clearance, washer size and connection angle were prove to be effective parameters to increase the strength of GFRP connections
Summary
The first use of fiber reinforced polymer dated back thirty years ago, and nowadays, FRP material is employed by many engineers, technician and architects in order to strengthen and reinforce concrete structures [1–5]. There is a great interest on the applications of FRP profiles to produce hybrid structural systems. Among FRP production technologies, pultrusion [7] is a consecutive process aimed to produce FRP longitudinal elements with constant cross-sections, by means of using continuous roving soaked with resin ad heated to cure them. Regarding the type of pultruded FRP elements, Alhawamdeh et al [8] reported the I-shape profiles were the most used ones. Pultruded FRPs have several advantages apart from the general ones directly associated with FRP materials (including corrosion resistance, high strength to weight ratio and durability). Marra [9] proved that pultruded FRP decreased the structure mass by about 70% and increased the strength and stiffness. Keller et al [10] reported that pultruded FRP materials that were used in bridge and building constructions remained effective up to 17 years after installation. Small cracks were seen in some elements of the studied bridge
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