ABSTRACT
In this paper, the authors partially filled the top layer of the glued pultruded sections to get benefit from the advantages of multi-celled beams
1 INTRODUCTION
Advance composite materials have recently gained much attention in the civil engineering applications like bridge superstructure including decks and beams. However, Fibre Reinforced Polymer (FRP) composites are making limited progress in the field of highway structures due to their high initial cost compared with conventional materials and their relatively low elastic modulus(Chakrabortty et al., 2011). Although the problem of high initial cost has been addressed using large volume automated process such as pultrusion, the low modulus of Glass FRP (GFRP) still limited the composites serviceability and prevented full use of its strength. Similarly, FRPs are susceptible to local buckling, compression buckling failure and web-flange junction failure (Mottram, 1992; Bank, 2006; Bai et al., 2013; Muttashar et al., 2015). These limitations of pultruded GFRP sections have been addressed by innovative design and applications.
