ABSTRACT
The maturing of Australia’s and other countries’ bridging infrastructure has accelerated rapidly in the last century. However, times have changed, resulting in increased service loading and traffic volumes, diminished capacity through aging and environmental degradation, more stringent updates in design code regulations, and the need for seismic retrofit in some parts of the world. Other possible deficiencies in a bridge structure could be improper design, construction or maintenance. One new class of structural material known as Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) has come up for its high tensile strength and in-plane stiffness, excellent corrosion resistance, linear behaviour to failure and light-weight (about one-quarter of steel’s density) characteristics, all advantages over steel in traditional rehabilitation methods.
