Effects of Bonded Splice Joints on the Flexural Response of Pultruded Fibre Reinforced Polymer Beams

Abstract

Abstract. Three Pultruded Fibre Reinforced Polymer (PFRP) 152 x 152 x 6.4mm Wide Flange (WF) beams were fabricated with a central two-plate splice joint. The 6.4mm thick PFRP splice plates were 210, 410 and 610mm long. Each beam was tested in symmetric four-point bending about its major and minor-axis and deflections, rotations and surface strains were recorded. Beam transverse stiffnesses, support rotations and splice rotational stiffnesses were quantified and compared with theoretical predictions. Predicted deflections were 3.5% to 18.5% larger and support rotations were 10% smaller to 14.2% larger than the experimental values. Splice end rotations were generally poorly predicted.

Effects of splice joint geometry and bolt torque on the serviceability response of pultruded glass fibre reinforced polymer composite beams

“…It was found that the predicted support rotations and mid-span deflections significantly under-estimated the values recorded in the four-point bending tests (counting from the left, see the last column in Table 8 and columns 5 and 7 in Table 9). This outcome was not altogether surprising, despite the fact that the Method of Transformed Sections combined with Moh -Area theorems had been shown to give reasonably accurate predictions for rotations and deflections of pultruded GFRP beams with mid-span bonded splice joints (see [10] and [11]).…”

“…In [10] and [11] the first author used the Method of Transformed Section orems [17] to develop formulae for predicting the deformations of pultruded GFRP beams with bonded splice joints. He demonstrated that, in general, the formulae provided reasonably good predictions of the mid-span deflections and support rotations up to the serviceability deflection limit, though the rotational stiffnesses of the bonded splice joints were predicted with significantly lower accuracy.…”

“…The principal objective of that investigation was to demonstrate that pseudoductility could be achieved during failure of the continuous beam by using a ductile adhesive within the splice joint. Somewhat later, experimental and analytical research on the flexural behaviour of single-span simply supported GFRP beams with pultruded GFRP bonded splice joints at mid-span was reported in [10] and [11]. In verse stiffnesses, the rotations recorded at the extremities of the splice joints in [10] enabled their rotational stiffnesses to be quantified.…”

“…Somewhat later, experimental and analytical research on the flexural behaviour of single-span simply supported GFRP beams with pultruded GFRP bonded splice joints at mid-span was reported in [10] and [11]. In verse stiffnesses, the rotations recorded at the extremities of the splice joints in [10] enabled their rotational stiffnesses to be quantified. The analytical developments presented in [11] quantified optimal splice plate lengths and compared the relative effects of splice plate materials (GFRP versus CFRP) and their geometries on the transverse stiffnesses of such beams.…”