TY - JOUR
T1 - Durability Assessment of 15- To 20-Year-Old GFRP Bars Extracted from Bridges in the US. I
T2 - Selected Bridges, Bar Extraction, and Concrete Assessment
AU - Benzecry, Vanessa
AU - Al-Khafaji, Ali F.
AU - Haluza, Rudy T.
AU - Bakis, Charles E.
AU - Myers, John J.
AU - Nanni, Antonio
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors are grateful to the Strategic Development Council (SDC) of the American Concrete Institute (ACI) and NSF Industry/University Center for the Integration of Composites into Infrastructure (CICI) at the University of Miami under Grant No. NSF-1916342 for providing the funding that allowed the extraction of the cores and the distribution of specimens to four laboratories for the performance of the tests and the Tier 1 ReCAST University Transportation Center for supporting a portion of the laboratory testing and evaluation. Similarly, the authors acknowledge the collaboration and help provided by the state and local authorities that have jurisdiction on the selected bridges for allowing this research to take place. Several other individuals provided technical support to this endeavor. In particular, the authors thank Jason Cox of Missouri S&T, and Ryan Koch, Bryan Barragan, Doug Gremel, Mala Nagarajan, and Nelson Yee of Owens Corning Infrastructure Solutions. The opinions and findings expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the sponsor.
Funding Information:
Gills Creek Route 668 Bridge was completed in July 2003. This bridge was part of a project to investigate the durability and effectiveness of GFRP bar reinforcement in concrete decks. It was a project between the Virginia Department of Transportation, the Virginia Transportation Research Council, and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, funded by the FHWA IBRC program (Phillips et al. 2005).
Funding Information:
The O’Fallon Park Bridge, shown in Fig. S11, was completed in 2003. This bridge was part of a project to investigate the feasibility of the use of FRP in highway bridge decks. The construction was developed through a collaboration between the City and County of Denver, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT), and FHWA, and it was funded by the FHWA IBRC program (Camata and Shing 2005). This bridge is located west of the city of Denver and is exposed to approximately 200 freeze–thaw cycles per year (Haley 2011).
Funding Information:
Miles Road Bridge No. 178, also known as the Cuyahoga County Bridge, was a rehabilitation project completed in October 2003. This project was funded by the FHWA’s Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century—IBRC Grant, administered through the Ohio Department of Transportation. This rehabilitation project consisted of rebuilding the bridge deck with GFRP-reinforced concrete and also implemented a monitoring system to collect strain, temperature, and deflection data (Eitel 2005).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
PY - 2021/4/1
Y1 - 2021/4/1
N2 - Glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) bars have been used in concrete structures as an alternative to steel bars due to their noncorrosive behavior. However, due to the lack of full understanding of long-term performance, their use as internal reinforcement is still limited. To evaluate the durability of in-service GFRP bars under natural exposure, a collaborative project including four organizations investigated the conditions of GFRP bars and their surrounding concrete from bridges with 15-20 years of service. The aim of Part I of a two-paper series is to describe the bridge structures, methods of extraction, and the results of concrete testing, wheras Part II focuses on GFRP bar performance. The extracted bars were tested for physical, mechanical, and chemical properties, and the surrounding concrete was evaluated for chloride penetration, pH, and carbonation depth at the level of reinforcement. Results showed that carbonation and chloride may have reached the depth of the GFRP bars. This paper discusses the process of extraction of the bars, including the location and type of the selected bridge, and the concrete tests performed in terms of procedure, results, and observations.
AB - Glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) bars have been used in concrete structures as an alternative to steel bars due to their noncorrosive behavior. However, due to the lack of full understanding of long-term performance, their use as internal reinforcement is still limited. To evaluate the durability of in-service GFRP bars under natural exposure, a collaborative project including four organizations investigated the conditions of GFRP bars and their surrounding concrete from bridges with 15-20 years of service. The aim of Part I of a two-paper series is to describe the bridge structures, methods of extraction, and the results of concrete testing, wheras Part II focuses on GFRP bar performance. The extracted bars were tested for physical, mechanical, and chemical properties, and the surrounding concrete was evaluated for chloride penetration, pH, and carbonation depth at the level of reinforcement. Results showed that carbonation and chloride may have reached the depth of the GFRP bars. This paper discusses the process of extraction of the bars, including the location and type of the selected bridge, and the concrete tests performed in terms of procedure, results, and observations.
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U2 - 10.1061/(ASCE)CC.1943-5614.0001110
DO - 10.1061/(ASCE)CC.1943-5614.0001110
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85100059014
SN - 1090-0268
VL - 25
JO - Journal of Composites for Construction
JF - Journal of Composites for Construction
IS - 2
M1 - 04021007
ER -