HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

This study investigates the durability of glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) reinforcing bars (rebars) and their bond in concrete. Accelerated aging tests were first conducted on bare rebars that were either subjected to direct immersion in an alkaline solution or previously embedded in concrete before immersion in the solution (indirect immersion). Accelerated aging was conducted at different temperatures of the solution (20 °C, 40 °C and 60 °C) and for various periods up to 240 days. Residual tensile properties were determined for rebars subjected to direct immersion and served as input data of a predictive Arrhenius model. A large decrease in the residual tensile strength assigned to the alkali-attack of glass fibers was extrapolated in the long term, suggesting that direct immersion is very severe compared to actual service conditions. Short-beam tests were also performed on rebars conditioned under direct/indirect immersion conditions, but did not reveal any significant evolution of the interlaminar shear strength (ILSS). In a second part, bond tests were performed on pull-out specimens after immersion in the alkaline solution at different temperatures, in order to assess possible changes in the concrete/GFRP bond properties over aging. Results showed antagonistic effects, with an initial increase in bond strength assigned to a confinement effect of the rebar resulting from changes in the concrete properties over aging, followed by a decreasing trend possibly resulting from interfacial degradation. Complementary characterizations by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy were also carried out to evaluate the effects of aging on the physical/microstructural properties of GFRPs.

No abstract

Distributed Optical Fiber Sensors (DOFS) are gaining interest for structural health monitoring applications. Recently, they have been successfully used to monitor the strain profiles at the interface between concrete and steel or composite rebars during pullout tests. In the framework of durability studies on Glass Fiber-Reinforced Polymer reinforcing bars (rebars), this method offers interesting perspectives for monitoring the evolution of the concrete/rebar bond behavior under accelerated ageing conditions. However, the durability of the bonded DOFS instrumentation itself should be investigated in a preliminary stage, to assess possible alteration of its performance over aging, which would raise questions about the validity of strain measurements in the long term. This article presents the first results of an experimental program aiming to address this specific issue. In this work, steel rebars were equipped with bonded optical fibers. Half-length of the instrumented rebars was subjected to hydrothermal ageing by immersion in an alkaline solution, while the remaining length was exposed to standard laboratory conditions. After exposure, the rebars were tested in tension and the DOFS strain profiles were simultaneously measured. These strain profiles were then compared to reference measurements performed before ageing, providing insights on the influence of the ageing conditions on the response of the DOFS.