An experimental study of the behavior of connections for pultruded GFRP I-beams and rectangular tubes

A review of the behaviour and analysis of bolted connections and joints in pultruded fibre reinforced polymers

“…Web cleats cut from pultruded shapes are not likely to have acceptable fibre reinforcement to resist the joint deformations generated from prying action and become susceptible to delamination failure when joint rotation has attained 10 mrad. An experimental study of the behaviour of beam-to-column connections for pultruded FRP I-beams and box-sections was conducted by Smith [44] under the supervision of Parson and Hjelmstad [45,46] with the aim of comparing both structural systems, from a stiffness and resistance standpoint. Eventually, the authors proposed an innovative connection design by means of the so-called cuff connection.…”

“…The typical ultimate failure mode of joints with flange angles and web cleats made from pultruded material is that of separation of the column web from the facing flange in the region of the top angle under the action of the tensile bending forces being transmitted through the angle [45]. This mode of failure is likely to govern the joint behaviour because the web and the flange in the upper region of the column tends to act as two individual orthotropic plates that separate from each other due to insufficient fibre reinforcement in this interface to sustain the tensile forces that are transmitted by the top cleat.…”

Understanding Content Management

“…In 1995, Salim et al 48 evaluated the flexural behavior of two pultruded GFRP box beams and two pultruded H‐shaped beams with the development of an analytical model for thin‐walled laminated beams. Research on behavior of I‐beams and rectangular tubes and their joint connections has been conducted by Nagaraj and GangaRao49 and Smith et al 50.…”

Bolted connections in PFRP structures

“…The primary focus of this test work, which included both conventional web/flange cleat and less conventional layouts, was the determination of the initial rotational stiffness of the connection for use in semi-rigid PFRP frame analysis/design. And, most recently, Smith et al [52,53] have also carried out tests on bolted connections between open and boxsection PFRPs. These tests were conducted using a set-up similar to that used in refs[43*,44*,49*].…”