Experimental and statistical investigations of the material properties of FRP reinforcement in compression

Abstract

Internationally leading standards currently do not permit to consider the contribution of reinforcement made of fibre reinforced polymers (FRP) to a concrete member’s compressive load-bearing capacity due to a lack of reliable knowledge regarding FRP’s material properties in compression. Thus, there is a very high demand for carefully specifying an optimised test setup for FRP bar reinforcement that accounts for both theoretical considerations and established standards from other industry branches. This paper presents an extensive literature review on mechanical approaches to describe FRP material properties in compression, existing test setups from various industry branches as well as experimental studies that have been conducted in order to research the compressive material properties of FRP reinforcement. Based on experimental results from literature a database was compiled. Following a reasonable choice of a test setup based on the literature study, an experimental campaign was setup, in order to investigate the influence of different fibre materials (carbon, glass, basalt), polymer matrices and bar diameters on the compressive material properties of FRP reinforcement bars. In addition to the experimental determination of the material properties, the joint evaluation of the total sample size of n = 95 own experimental test results and the results from the database generated from literature allows for statistical investigations. Thus, the determination of material scatter and the estimation of the distribution type by means of a statistical analysis applying the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test provides the basis for further research towards the reliability of concrete structures reinforced with FRP bars in compression.