Thermoset polymer performance under harsh environments to evaluate glass composite rebars for infrastructure applications
- West Virginia Univ., Morgantown, WV (United States). Constructed Facilities Center
- Reichhold Chemicals Inc., Durham, NC (United States)
Corrosion of steel bars in concrete infrastructure facilities such as bridges, buildings, marine constructions and chemical plants is a serious problem. Various solutions have been tried in the past to counter the threat of corrosion in steel bars by using epoxy coatings, cathodic protection, increased concrete cover thickness and use of polymer concrete. None of the measures have provided a long term solution. The US Department of Transportation estimates the cost of repairing deteriorated infrastructure facilities to be billions of dollars. Glass fiber reinforced plastic (GFRP) bars have the potential to replace steel bars in concrete structures due to their superior mechanical and chemical properties such as non-corrosiveness, non-magnetic properties, high strength and light weight. Long term durability of GFRP under harsh environments needs to be completely understood before their field implementation. This paper describes the accelerated tests conducted on 13 mm and 19 mm (No. 4 and No. 6) E-glass fiber reinforced bars, manufactured with different durable resins, to evaluate the effect of environmental factors. Conditioning schemes consisted of exposing GFRP bars to ambient and freeze-thaw temperature cycles, chemical environments in the liquid form (pH{approximately}7--13) and sustained stress. GFRP bars used in this study were manufactured with five specially selected thermoset polymeric resins, and the conditioned bars were tested in tension to evaluate the changes in strength and stiffness with respect to unconditioned bars. Test results indicate that the GFRP bars with urethane modified bisphenol vinylester have excellent strength and stiffness properties as compared to bars with different resins under five conditioning schemes considered.
- OSTI ID:
- 392388
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-9602107-; TRN: IM9647%%242
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 51. annual conference and expo for Composite Institute, Cincinnati, OH (United States), 5-7 Feb 1996; Other Information: PBD: 1996; Related Information: Is Part Of Composites Institute`s 51. annual conference and expo `96: Proceedings; PB: 700 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Estimation of durability of GFRP laminates under stress-corrosive environments using acoustic emission
Bond variability of glass-fiber-reinforcing-plastic reinforcement in concrete