ABSTRACT
Several technologies were developed for manufacturing FRP materials as laminates, rods, filament wound tanks and many others. FRP materials have a number of advantages when compared to traditional construction materials such as steel and concrete. FRP materials have been utilized in small quantities in the building and construction companies for decades. At the moment, numerous successful applications using FRP composites for repair, strengthening and reinforcement of concrete and masonry structures such as bridges, piers, columns, beams, walls, walkways, pipelines etc. have been reported. Nearly 600 Articles concerning FRP use in the construction industry published between 1972 and 2000 are available. This expresses a measure of the significant potential that FRP materials showed in the last decades. Japan, Canada and U.S.A. developed design codes for use of FRP in civil engineering applications, but further reviews and experimental data are still needed. FRP reinforcement in concrete structures should be used as a substitute of steel rebars for that cases in which aggressive environment produce high steel corrosion, or lightweight is an important design factor, or transportation cost increase significantly with the weight of the materials. In the last year a new technology has also been developed using FRP rods in structural rehabilitation of deficient RC structures. In fact, the use of Near Surface Mounted (NSM) FRP rods is a promising technology for increasing flexural and shear strength of deficient RC and PC members. Another application
of FRP rods is the anchorage of FRP externally bonded sheets in RC members, used for shear strengthening, as it can be seen in Figure 1.
