CICE 2010 - The 5th International Conference on FRP Composites in Civil Engineering

September 27-29, 2010 Beijing, China

Durability of GFRP Reinforcement Bars

Charles E. Bakis (cbakis@psu.edu)
Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

ABSTRACT: Results of a 3-year-long investigation of durability of one type of glass fiber reinforced vinylester
composite reinforcement bar are summarized. Bars were cast in concrete beams and subjected to simultaneous
sustained load and exposure to one of four different environments: ambient indoor laboratory, natural outdoor
weathering in central Pennsylvania, high-alkaline aqueous solution at 60C, and alternating -17C dry freeze
and room-temperature water immersion. The conditioned beams were tested to determine crack width in the
concrete, local bond-slip behavior of the bars, and tensile stress-strain behavior of bars extracted from the
beams. Over time, crack widths increased by up to 75% while local ultimate bond strength in the anchorage
zone remained essentially constant or increased. Tensile strength decreased by as much as 25% in the high
moisture environments and was essentially constant in the indoor and outdoor environments. These results
suggest promising durability characteristics of GFRP bars under realistic service conditions.

1 INTRODUCTION reinforced beams under sustained loading and envi-

The durability of glass fiber reinforced polymer
(GFRP) composite reinforcement bars for concrete
structures has been the subject of much research in
recent years. For example, several laboratories have
investigated the tensile behavior (Bakis et al. 1998,
Porter and Barnes 1998, Dejke et al. 2003, Nkurun-
ziza et al. 2005, Chen et al. 2007) and bond behavior
(Bank et al. 1998, Bakis et al. 1998) of GFRP bars in
aggressive environments. Specific conclusions vary
according to the type of bar being tested and the ex-
act combination of stress and environmental condi-
tions applied over time prior to the measurement of
tensile or bond strength. The mechanisms of tensile
and bond strength reduction are believed to be glass
corrosion and fiber/matrix interface degradation, re-
spectively. Elevated temperature, increased access of
moisture to the bar, alkalinity of the moisture, and
elevated stress exerted on the bar are generally con-
sidered deleterious to tensile and bond strength.
However, the degradation in longitudinal modulus of
elasticity of GFRP bars under these aggressive condi-
tions is relatively minor. Conditions inside of con-
crete have been found to be more benign than those
imposed in many laboratory tests done on bare bars
in various aggressive aqueous solutions (Tannous &
Saadatmanesh 1999, Nkurunziza et al. 2005). There-
fore, it is possible that current design guidelines that
limit the maximum sustained tensile stress on GFRP
bars may be overly conservative. On the other hand,
information on the long-term crack width of GFRP-
ronmental conditioning is relatively scarce.
In this paper, a review of the findings of a 3-year-
long investigation of the tensile and bond durability
of GFRP bars embedded in loaded concrete beams is
given. The purpose of the review is to present the
findings together for the first time. Previous publica-
tions by the author and his colleagues explain the de-
tails of the investigation of tensile behavior (Bakis et
al. 2005) and bond behavior (Bakis et al. 2004,
2007). Space limita-
tions prevent the inclu-
sion of all the details in
this paper.
2 METHODS
Figure 1. GFRP bar (mm scale)
2.1 Experimental
The 10.2-mm-dia. E-glass reinforced vinylester bars,
shown in Figure 1, were obtained from the manufac-
turer in October, 1999. The ingredients of the bars
are listed in Table 1. The materials and parameters
reported here differ slightly from bars currently made
by the manufacturer.
Beam specimens of 178(H)89(W)1830(L) mm
dimensions were cast using concrete provided by a
local ready-mix plant. A single longitudinal GFRP
reinforcement bar was centered 38 mm from the bot-
tom of the section. The actual and balanced rein-
forcement ratios were 0.66% and 0.46%, respective-
ly. The cylinder strength was 39.4 MPa. The beams
were pre-cracked in 4-point bending to a moment of
2.19 kNm, which is approximately 50% of the ulti-
mate governed by shear/compression.
Table 1. Bar characteristics (Gremel)
Property and Unit
E-Glass Fiber volume fraction (%)
Vinylester matrix volume fraction
(%)
Styrene (pph wt. matrix)
Hydrous kaolin clay (pph wt. matrix)
Longitudinal Tensile Modulus (GPa)
Longitudinal Tensile Strength (MPa)
For each conditioning period, three pairs of pre-
cracked beams were placed in 4-point loading jigs
under a moment of 850 Nm, which is 20% of ulti-
mate (Figure 2). According to a conventional beam
section analysis with parabolic concrete behavior, the
sustained stress and strain on the bars were roughly
78 MPa and 2000 , or 11% of the manufacturers
ultimate listed in Table 1.
Beam Restraint Pre-Cracks (8)
Compression Spring
Figure 2. Sustained 4-pt. bending rig.
Loaded beams were placed in four environments:
up to ~3 years in an indoor laboratory environment
of 233C, 4060% RH; up to ~3 years outdoors in
University Park; up to ~12 months in a sealed, heated
immersion tank filled with a saturated solution of
Ca(OH)2 and 602C tap water (pH=1213); and up
to ~12 months of alternating immersion in water
232C (pH=8) and freezing at -172C. The
freeze/thaw (F/T) conditioning consisted of cycles
that lasted 5.6 days on average, with approximately
half the cycle time immersed in water. Roughly 60
F/T cycles accrued in 12 months of conditioning.
Crack widths at the bottom of the beams were
measured at irregular intervals using an optical mag-
nifier/reticule with 25 m resolution. The expression
for the maximum crack width, w, according to the
current ACI design guide for FRP reinforced con-
crete (ACI 2006), is as follows:
2 k b f f s
2
w d b ,
2 (1)
c
Ef 2
where Ef is the Youngs modulus of the bar, is the
ratio of the distance between the neutral axis and the
bottom of the section to the distance between the
neutral axis and the bar (1.308), kb is a bond-
dependent parameter, ff is the longitudinal stress on
the bar (78 MPa), dc is the cover depth (38.1 mm),
and sb is the bar spacing (44.5 mm). A value of kb
greater than 1.0 implies wider cracks than the case of
Value deformed steel bars under the same tensile strain.
51 The 90th percentile crack width for each set of beams
49 subjected to a particular duration of conditioning was
used to determine kb versus time under the assump-
1 tion that all the other terms in Eq. (1) are invariant
26 during conditioning.
41 After conditioning, beams were unloaded and sub-
700 jected to eccentric 3-point flexure tests to evaluate
bond behavior of the bar in the anchorage zone near
one end of each beam (Figure 3). In this test, load,
width of the concrete crack under the load point, and
free-end slip of the bar were measured for anchorage
zone lengths, l, of 314, 364, 414, and 464 mm. Fol-
lowing bond testing, the bars were carefully ex-
tracted from the untested portion of the beams by
removing the concrete cover. In preparation for
tensile testing, portions of the bars within the mids-
pan region subjected to sustained load were fitted
with metallic anchors filled with expansive cementi-
tious grout. Three to six bars of each conditioning
were tensile-tested in accordance with ASTM
D7205.
Figure 3. Eccentric 3-pt. flexure test for bond (mm)
2.2 Analytical
Bond behavior was characterized in terms of the lo-
cal bond-slip constitutive law fitted to the experimen-
tal data. The assumed relationship between local
bond stress, , and local slip, s, is
Cs (1 s / s ) for 0 s s
(2)
0 for s s
where C, , and s are empirical constants that can
vary with loading time and environment. The local
bond strength, max, and interfacial fracture energy,
Gf, defined as the maximum value of and the area
under the local -s curve, respectively, are given by
s 1
max C , (3)
1 1
 C s ( 1) maximum pull-out force occurred with any of the
Gf . (4) conditionings followed in this investigation. Figure
(1 )(2 ) 6 shows the change in shape of the local bond stress-
slip curves as a function of conditioning time in the
For loads where the local slip vanishes at some point outdoor environment. As seen in this example, it was
within the anchorage zone, the equation for bar generally true for all environments that parameters
force, N, in terms of the loaded-end slip, s l , is and s decrease slightly with time, making the local
-s curves taller, narrower, and almost perfectly rigid
2CE f A f d 2CE f A f d at low stress. Local Bond Strength vs. Time
N sl1 sl2 (5)
1 s (2 ) , 40
F/T Indoor
and the predicted bar force, N s , for sl s is 30
Outdoor
As Received
Ca(OH)2

max (MPa)
N s 2E f A f dG f . (6) 20

Loaded end slip was equated to half the width of the 10

primary concrete crack (Figure 3), while bar force
was calculated using a conventional section analysis 0
with parabolic concrete behavior. Equations (5) and 0 10 20 30 40
Conditioning Time (mo.)
(6) can only be used up to the onset of free-end slip.
Parameters C, , and s were found by fitting Eq.
(5) to the experimental Nsl data. Figure 5. Local bond strength, max, vs. conditioning time.
Outdoor

25
3 RESULTS A/R
20
O/D-5
Crack width parameter kb is plotted versus condition- 15
O/D-12
(MPa)

ing time in Figure 4. Initial values of kb are, on aver- O/D-19

age, 1.14. It is observed that kb, which varies propor- 10 O/D-36
tionally to crack width, increases by up to 75% in all
environments except freeze/thaw, where it is seen to 5

remain roughly constant out to one year. The large 0

amount of scatter in the outdoor measurements could 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
be due to the highly variable temperatures when the s (mm)
measurements were made.
Figure 6. Local bond stress-slip curves for outdoor (OD) en-
2.5 vironment and as-received (A/R) bars (-n in the legend refers
to the number of months of conditioning).
2

1.5 The tensile strength of bars after exposure to vari-

Ca(OH) 2 ous environments and sustained load are shown in
kb
1 Freeze/Thaw Figure 7. The included scatter bars show the range
Indoor
of the individual data points for each conditioning.
0.5 The as-received data point, obtained for bars that
Outdoor
were never cast in concrete, shows a strength of 643
0 MPaabout 8% less than the manufacturers value.
0 10 20 30 40 The strength for zero conditioning time, 627 MPa,
Time (months) was obtained from bars cast in beams, subject to pre-
liminary eccentric 3-pt bond tests, and removed for
Figure 4. Bond parameter kb vs. conditioning time. tensile testing without experiencing any sustained
load or special conditioning. This result shows that
Local bond strength, max versus conditioning time the casting and extraction processes did not degrade
is seen in Figure 5 to increase over time in the indoor the strength of the bars significantly. Indoor and
and outdoor environments. Hardly any change occurs outdoor conditionings of up to three years did not
in either of the more aggressive environments. The significantly affect the strength of the bars. The F/T
fracture energy, Gf, was noted to remain roughly conditioning caused a 15% loss of strength after a
constant over time, meaning that little change in the half year. This value did not change significantly by
the end of F/T testing at one year. In the Ca(OH)2
environment, the bars steadily lost strength until the
end of testing at one year, at which time the strength
loss was nearly 25%. On a semi-log scale, strength
reductions of roughly 20% per decade exist for the
F/T and Ca(OH)2 conditions. Even in these highly
aggressive environments, a linear extrapolation to 50
years predicts a residual tensile strength of ~300
MPa or about half the strength of virgin bar. No ap-
preciable change in elastic modulus was observed in
any of the tests. Strength vs. Condt'g Time
800
700
600
Strength (MPa)
500
400
300
As-Recd Indoor
200 Outdoor Ca(OH)2
F/T
100
0
0 10 20
Time (months)
Figure 7. Bar tensile strength vs. conditioning time.
4 CONCLUSIONS
GFRP bars were conditioned in concrete beams in
various environments with sustained loads of roughly
11% of ultimate. Although crack widths widened
by up to 75% for times as long as three years, most
of this increase was complete after about one year.
While the increase in crack width could be due to
bond degradation near the flexural cracks in con-
crete, it was observed from bond testing that the lo-
cal bond strength in the uncracked anchorage zone of
the beams did not degrade over time and in fact in-
creased slightly in some cases. The local bond-slip
curve showed a more brittle type of behavior with in-
creased conditioning time, although the area under
the curve remained about the same, leading to essen-
tially the same pullout-force for any conditioning fol-
lowed in this investigation.
Tensile testing of conditioned bars indicated de-
gradation only in the artificially aggressive environ-
ments, which in this investigation contained much
exposure to water: dry freeze/wet thaw and 60C
alkaline solution. In these cases, an extrapolation to
50 years predicted a residual strength of about half
the initial strength. No strength reduction was seen
in the natural indoor and outdoor environments for
times as long as 3 years.
5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was supported by the US National
Science Foundation under Grants No. 0219484 and
9908934. Hughes Brothers (Seward, Nebraska,
USA) donated the GFRP bars. The author thanks
Profs T.E. Boothby of Penn State Univ. and A.
Mukherjee of Indian Inst. Tech.-Bombay, who
helped plan and execute this research, and the many
students who helped with data generation and analy-
sis. The assistance and encouragement of Mr. Doug
Gremel is also appreciated. The opinions, findings,
and conclusions expressed in this paper are those of
the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of
the sponsors.
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