High Corrosion Resistant GFRP-UFC Composite Beams for Short Span Pedestrian Bridges

This paper describes the development of high corrosion resistant glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) and ultra-high strength fiber reinforced concrete (UFC) composite beams for construction of short span pedestrian bridges. The main advantage of these composite beams is, they can be used in corrosive environments at a low maintenance cost. The UFC slab is consisted of precast segments and those segments were connected to the GFRP I-beam top flange using FRP bolts and epoxy adhesive. Large-scale four point bending tests were carried out in order to select the suitable FRP bolt parameters for the composite beam. The experiment results revealed that the FRP bolts can be used instead of the steel bolts, as the shear connectors in the GFRP and UFC composite beams. The composite beams having non-headed FRP bolts exhibited better flexural capacity compared to the beams with FRP headed-bolts. Fiber model analysis was carried out on the composite beams and there was a good agreement between the analysis and experiment results. The experiment results were used to construct a short span pedestrian bridge in Miyagi prefecture, Japan. The static loading tests were carried out on that bridge for three loading types. The short span bridge showed acceptable performance in the loading tests.