Creep Behavior of Pultruded Ribbed GFRP Rebar and GFRP Reinforced Concrete Member

Fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) has been gathering interest from designers and engineers for its possible usage as a replacement reinforcement of a steel reinforcing bar due to its advantageous characteristics such as high tensile strength, non-corrosive material, etc. Since it is manufactured with various contents ratios, fiber types, and shapes without any general specification, test results for concrete members reinforced with these FRP reinforcing bars could not be systematically used. Moreover, since investigations for FRP reinforced members have mainly focused on short-term behavior, the purpose of this study is to evaluate long-term behaviors of glass FRP (GFRP) reinforcing bar and concrete beams reinforced with GFRP. In this paper, test results of tensile and bond performance of GFRP reinforcing bar and creep behavior are presented. In the creep tests, results showed that 100 years of service time can be secured when sustained load level is below 55% of tensile strength of GFRP reinforcing bar. A modification factor of 0.73 used to calculate long-term deflection of GFRP reinforced beams was acquired from the creep tests for GFRP reinforced concrete beams. It is expected that these test results would give more useful information for design of FRP reinforced members.