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 60, and alternating -17 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.
KEY WORDS
1 INTRODUCTION
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, Nkurunziza 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 exact combination of stress and environmental
conditions 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, respectively.
Elevated temperature, increased access of moisture to
the bar, alkalinity of the moisture, and elevated stress
exerted on the bar are generally considered deleterious
to tensile and bond strength. However, the degradation
in longitudinal modulus of elasticity of GFRP bars under
these aggressive conditions is relatively minor. Conditions
inside of concrete 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). Therefore,
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-reinforced beams
under sustained loading and environmental 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 publications by the author and
his colleagues explain the details of the investigation of
tensile behavior (Bakis et al. 2005) and bond behavior
(Bakis et al. 2004, 2007). Space limitations prevent the
inclusion of all the details in this paper.
2 METHODS
2.1 Experimental
The 10.2-mm-dia. E-glass reinforced vinylester bars,
shown in Figure 1, were obtained from the manufacturer
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.

Figure 1 GFRP bar (mm scale)
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 bottom of the section.
The actual and balanced reinforcement ratios were 0.66%
CICE 2010 - The 5th International Conference on FRP Composites in Civil Engineering
September 27-29, 2010, Beijing, China
L. Ye et al. (eds.), Advances in FRP Composites in Civil Engineering
Tsinghua University Press, Beijing and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011
Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on FRP Composites in Civil Engineering

34
and 0.46%, respectively. 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 ultimate governed by shear/compression.
Table 1 Bar characteristics (Gremel)
Property and Unit Value
E-Glass Fiber volume fraction (%) 51
Vinylester matrix volume fraction (%) 49
Styrene (pph wt. matrix) 1
Hydrous kaolin clay (pph wt. matrix) 26
Longitudinal Tensile Modulus (GPa) 41
Longitudinal Tensile Strength (MPa) 700

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 ultimate (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 c, or
11% of the manufacturers ultimate listed in Table 1.

Figure 2 Sustained 4-pt. bending rig.
Loaded beams were placed in four environments: up to ~
3 years in an indoor laboratory environment of 233,
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 602
tap water (pH=1213); and up to ~12 months of alternating
immersion in water 232 (pH=8) and freezing at
172. 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 magnifier/reticule
with 25 m resolution. The expression for the maximum
crack width, w, according to the current ACI design guide
for FRP reinforced concrete (ACI 2006), is as follows:
2
2
2
2
b f b
c
f
k f
s
w d
E
|
| |
= +
|
\ .
, (1)
where E
f
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), k
b
is a bond-dependent parameter, f
f
is
the longitudinal stress on the bar (78 MPa), d
c
is the cover
depth (38.1 mm), and s
b
is the bar spacing (44.5 mm). A
value of k
b
greater than 1.0 implies wider cracks than the
case of deformed steel bars under the same tensile strain.
The 90
th
percentile crack width for each set of beams
subjected to a particular duration of conditioning was
used to determine k
b
versus time under the assumption
that all the other terms in Eq. (1) are invariant during
conditioning.
After conditioning, beams were unloaded and subjected
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. Following bond testing, the bars
were carefully extracted from the untested portion of the
beams by removing the concrete cover. In preparation
for tensile testing, portions of the bars within the midspan
region subjected to sustained load were fitted with metallic
anchors filled with expansive cementitious 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 local
bond-slip constitutive law fitted to the experimental data.
The assumed relationship between local bond stress, t,
and local slip, s, is

>
s s
=
s s
s s s s Cs
for 0
0 for ) / 1 (
o
t
(2)
where C, o, and s are empirical constants that can vary
with loading time and environment. The local bond
strength, t
max
, and interfacial fracture energy, G
f
, defined
as the maximum value of t and the area under the local
t-s curve, respectively, are given by
o o
o
t
o
+
|
.
|

\
|
+
=
1
1
1
max
s
C
, (3)
) 2 )( 1 (
) 1 (
o o
o
+ +
=
+
s C
G
f
. (4)
For loads where the local slip vanishes at some point
within the anchorage zone, the equation for bar force, N,
Beam Restraint
Compression Spring
Pre-Cracks (8)
September 2729, 2010, Beijing, China

35
in terms of the loaded-end slip,
l
s , is
o o
o
t
o
t
+ +
+

+
=
2 1
) 2 (
2
1
2
l
f f
l
f f
s
s
d A CE
s
d A CE
N , (5)
and the predicted bar force,
s
N , for s s
l
> is
f f f s
dG A E N t 2 = . (6)
Loaded end slip was equated to half the width of the
primary concrete crack (Figure 3), while bar force was
calculated using a conventional section analysis with
parabolic concrete behavior. Equations (5) and (6) can
only be used up to the onset of free-end slip. Parameters
C, o, and s were found by fitting Eq. (5) to the
experimental
l
s N data.
3 RESULTS
Crack width parameter k
b
is plotted versus conditioning
time in Figure 4. Initial values of k
b
are, on average, 1.14.
It is observed that k
b
, which varies proportionally to
crack width, increases by up to 75% in all environments
except freeze/thaw, where it is seen to remain roughly
constant out to one year. The large amount of scatter in
the outdoor measurements could be due to the highly
variable temperatures when the measurements were made.

Figure 4 Bond parameter k
b
vs. conditioning time
Local bond strength, t
max
versus conditioning time is
seen in Figure 5 to increase over time in the indoor and
outdoor environments. Hardly any change occurs in
either of the more aggressive environments. The fracture
energy, G
f
, was noted to remain roughly constant over
time, meaning that little change in the maximum pull-out
force occurred with any of the conditionings followed in
this investigation. Figure 6 shows the change in shape
of the local bond stress-slip curves as a function of
conditioning time in the outdoor environment. As seen
in this example, it was generally true for all environments
that parameters o and s decrease slightly with time,
making the local t-s curves taller, narrower, and almost
perfectly rigid at low stress.
0
10
20
30
40
0 10 20 30 40
Conditioning Time (mo.)
t
m
a
x

(
M
P
a
)
F/T Indoor
Outdoor Ca(OH)2
As Received

Figure 5 Local bond strength, t
max
, vs. conditioning time.
0
5
10
15
20
25
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
s (mm)
t

(
M
P
a
)
A/R
O/D-5
O/D-12
O/D-19
O/D-36

Figure 6 Local bond stress-slip curves for outdoor (OD) environ-
ment and as-received (A/R) bars (-n in the legend refers to the
number of months of conditioning)
The tensile strength of bars after exposure to various
environments and sustained load are shown in Figure 7.
The included scatter bars show the range of the individual
data points for each conditioning. The as-received data
point, obtained for bars that were never cast in concrete,
shows a strength of 643 MPaabout 8% less than the
manufacturers value. The strength for zero conditioning
time, 627 MPa, was obtained from bars cast in beams,
subject to preliminary eccentric 3-pt bond tests, and
removed for tensile testing without experiencing any
sustained load or special conditioning. This result shows
that the casting and extraction processes did not degrade
the strength of the bars significantly. Indoor and outdoor
conditionings of up to three years did not significantly
affect the strength of the bars. The F/T conditioning
caused a 15% loss of strength after a 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 appreciable
change in elastic modulus was observed in any of the tests.
2
Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on FRP Composites in Civil Engineering

36
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
0 10 20 30 40
Time (months)
S
t
r
e
n
g
t
h

(
M
P
a
)
As-Recd Indoor
Outdoor Ca(OH)2
F/T

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 concrete, it was observed from bond
testing that the local bond strength in the uncracked
anchorage zone of the beams did not degrade over time
and in fact increased slightly in some cases. The local
bond-slip curve showed a more brittle type of behavior
with increased conditioning time, although the area under
the curve remained about the same, leading to essentially
the same pullout-force for any conditioning followed in
this investigation.
Tensile testing of conditioned bars indicated degradation
only in the artificially aggressive environments, 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 analysis.
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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