International Concrete Abstracts Portal

The use of FRP tendons has become an attractive alternative to steel tendons in prestressed concrete structures to avoid strength and serviceability problems related to corrosion of steel. There is however a lack of knowledge in serviceability behavior related to deflection after cracking for beams prestressed with FRP tendons. Conventional approaches used to compute deflection of cracked members prestressed with steel is problematic at best, and the situation is exacerbated further with the use of FRP tendons having a lower modulus of elasticity than steel. Deflection of FRP reinforced (nonprestressed) concrete flexural members computed with Branson’s effective moment of inertia 𝐼􀀁 requires a correction factor (called a softening factor) that reduces the member stiffness sufficiently to provide reasonable estimates of post-cracking deflection. For FRP prestressed concrete however, this approach does not always work as expected and deflection can be either underestimated or overestimated significantly.

This study investigates the accuracy of different models proposed for estimating deflection of cracked FRP prestressed members using a database of 38 beams collected from the literature. All beams are fully prestressed. Results indicate that using Branson’s effective moment of inertia 𝐼􀀁 with a generic softening factor can produce reasonable estimates of deflection provided the 𝐼􀀁 response is shifted up to the decompression moment or adjusted with an effective prestress moment defined by an effective eccentricity of the prestress force. The former approach overpredicts deflection by 20% on average while the latter overpredicts deflection by not more than 5% based on the beams available for comparison. Assuming a bilinear moment deflection response overpredicts deflection by 12%, while an approach proposed by Bischoff (which also shifts the 𝐼􀀁 response upwards) overpredicts deflection by 23%. These last two approaches work reasonably well without the need for a correction factor.

Developments in the prestressed concrete industry evolved to incorporate innovative design materials and strategies driven towards a more sustainable and durable infrastructure. With steel corrosion being the biggest durability issue for concrete bridges, FRP tendons have been gaining acceptance in modern prestressed technologies, as bonded or unbonded reinforcement, or as part of a “hybrid” system that combines unbonded CFRP tendons and bonded steel strands. Assessments of the efficacy of hybrid-steel beams, combining bonded and unbonded steel tendons. in the construction of segmental bridges and in retrofitting damaged members has been established by several researchers. However, limited research has been conducted on comparable hybrid prestressed beams combining CFRP and steel tendons (hybrid steel-cfrp beams). This paper provides an insight on the flexural behaviour of eighteen prestressed beams tested under third-point loading until failure with the emphasis on the tendon materials (i.e., CFRP and steel) and bonding condition (i.e., bonded, unbonded). In addition, a comprehensive finite element analysis of the beams’ overall behaviour following the trussed-beam methodology is conducted and compared with the experimental results. Results show that hybrid beams, utilizing CFRP as the unbonded element maintained comparable performance when compared to hybrid steel beams. The results presented in this paper aim to expand the use of hybrid tendons and facilitate their incorporation into standard design provisions and guidelines.

Deterioration of concrete bridges has resulted in reduction of their service lives and increase in required maintenance which is associated with cost and inconvenience to the public. A prevalent cause of concrete bridge deterioration is corrosion which initiates by chloride ions penetration past the protecting layers and by corroding the steel reinforcement. Because corrosion in prestressed concrete members has more serious consequences than in non-prestressed reinforced concrete, it is important that bridge designers and inspectors be aware of the potential problems and environments that may cause the issue and address them as soon as they are detected. This paper discusses a case study of a highway bridge (Hyndman Bridge, Ontario) including its deterioration, causes, mitigation measures, structural evaluation and the selected repair method. The rehabilitation design is based on guidelines of the latest editions of the CHDBC and ACI 440.2R. CFRP strengthening techniques have been proposed to address the flexure and shear deficient capacity of deteriorated girders. It is concluded that by using a suitable repair methodology employing CFRP, it is possible to upgrade the bridge to comply with the latest requirements of the code and increase the service life of the structure which otherwise would have needed imminent replacement.

Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymers (CFRPs) are a material of choice in the aerospace and automotive industry, but despite decades of research into their application in structural engineering applications, and in particular in new-build construction of buildings and bridges, CFRP elements remain regarded as somewhat exotic in structural engineering and their widespread take-up is mostly limited to the non-prestressed strengthening of conventional structural members. The study presented in this paper assessed the performance of CFRP bridge tendons, prestressed for 18 years at 45% of their design ultimate tensile capacity in a non-conditioned outdoor environment, over water, in Lucerne, Switzerland. The performance of the tendons is considered alongside pristine samples of the same tendons never used and stored, unstressed, indoors since 1997. Thermal characterization (matrix digestion, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC)) was used to determine the fibre volume fraction and glass transition temperature, and tensile tests were performed and compared against available original baseline results from 1997. This comparisons show that the in-service tendons do not appear to have been adversely affected by 18 years service under sustained loading, and have retained the vast majority of their original, unstressed material properties. The in-service tendons only lost about 10.5% of their ultimate tensile capacity over time, while the pristine (unstressed) tendons also lost 7.9% of their capacity; this suggests that sustained loading and an external, unconditioned service environment do not significantly adversely affect the mechanical properties of the tendons after 18 years in service.

The release of ACI 440.11-22 building design code for concrete structures reinforced with GFRP bars comes with several challenges at various fronts. One such challenge is tackled in this paper which is the development of limit interaction diagrams for elliptical bridge columns reinforced with GFRP bars under biaxial bending plus axial compression/tension. This type of columns requires special considerations at all levels. This paper depicts the various formulations encountered herein in a detailed treatment highlighting the critical steps to build an efficient analysis algorithm. The formulation is implemented into a user-friendly software developed using object-oriented programming, namely the C# programming language. The robustness of the formulation is tested by comparing interaction diagrams of elliptical sections to those of corresponding rectangular sections. The significance of an ACI code comment requiring bar orientation being considered for circular sections with less than 8 bars is also examined in this paper. This paper also tests the ACI recommendation to neglect GFRP action in compression. Results indicate reasonable similarity among interaction diagrams of elliptical and rectangular sections leading to the conclusion that the formulation presented herein provides an accurate tool to analyze elliptical sections.