Experimental studies on multicellular GFRP bridge deck panels under static and fatigue loading

Abstract

This paper presents the experimental investigations carried out on hand lay-up prototype multicellular glass fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP) composite bridge deck panels under static and fatigue loading. Various sustainability aspects with regard to GFRP structural members were discussed. The aspects include (i) social development; (ii) environmental protection; and (iii) economic development. The GFRP material properties were evaluated by using (i) micromechanics; (ii) simplified composite micromechanics equations (Chamis); (iii) carpet plots; and (iv) equations proposed by Tsai–Hahn. GFRP members with various cross sections were tested to decide the better performance under flexural loading and found that GFRP with hollow section performs better. For the optimised cross-section dimensions, six multi-cellular GFRP composite bridge deck panels of size 1250 mm × 333 mm × 150 mm (l × b × d) were fabricated by hand lay-up process and tested for static and fatigue loading. It was observed from the experiment that during testing the bridge deck panel, no load shedding was observed even though the resin started cracking. At ultimate load, there was a loud cracking sound and the specimen load shedding occurred suddenly. Factor of safety for load and deflection was computed. From the fatigue experiments, it is observed that the percentage reduction in stiffness is approximately 12% for 500,000 cycles.