ABSTRACT
There is a great demand for bridge components, piling, poles, highway overhead sign structures, and other structural components in corrosive environments to be made of materials that are more durable in comparison to traditional construction materials. More effective systems are also desired to accelerate the construction process and utilize the merits of constituent materials intelligently. The new systems will have to withstand corrosive environments such as the splash zone in the case of marine piles, where they would be alternately submerged and exposed (Stapleman 1997). Similarly, highway overhead sign structures, poles, and bridge piers would have to retain their integrity in cold regions where salt is used for deicing the roads. Fiber reinforced polymers (FRP) have been widely used in recent years for rehabilitation and strengthening of existing structures to increase their flexural, shear, and axial load resistance as well as improve their ductility. However, their use to date in new construction has been limited to a number of demonstration projects around the world, where FRPs have been used in the form of bar and tendon reinforcement in concrete structures as replacements for steel reinforcement due to their high strength-to-weight ratio and corrosion-resistant characteristics. FRPs may also be used in the form of structurally integrated stay-in-place formwork for concrete structures in a hybrid manner that maximizes the advantages of both FRP and concrete while simplifying the construction procedure and reducing the erection time. In the last few years, a number of such hybrid systems have been developed; a brief review of some of these systems is presented below.
