Behaviour of Pultruded Beam Column infilled with Engineered Cementitious Composite

Abstract

Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) materials have started replacing the traditional materials in all the industries as they offer highest specific strength and moduli among the traditional engineering materials. For this reason, they are in great demand in aerospace and aircraft application where high strength and stiffness to weight ratios are required. The Glass Fibre Reinforced polymer (GFRP) is an advanced material which is made of glass fibres together with polyester or vinyl ester or epoxy resins. GFRP composites are becoming highly important in various fields of technology such as Automotive, naval and aerospace industries due to their properties that include superior corrosion resistance, light weight, high strength to weight ratio, low thermal conductivity, high stiffness, high fatigue strength, ability to resist chemical and microbiological attacks. Despite having many advantages compared with traditional materials, GFRP sections show brittle behaviour under loading. Engineered Cementitious Composites (ECC) is one of the high performance fibre reinforced cementitious composite having more tensile strength and high ductile properties. The use of High Volume Fly Ash (HVFA) in ECC could help in modifying the strength of ECC which in turn results in the reduction of cement usage and carbon foot print. River sand is also becoming a scarce commodity and hence exploring alternatives to it has become important. Curing process protects the loss of moisture required for hydration, increases the strength and decreases the permeability of hardened concrete. But, curing is not always feasible, and the addition of Polyethylene Glycol (PEG) acts as an internal curing agent. High volume fly ash concrete shows delayed setting time and increased temperature sensitivity. This could be effectively moderated by the replacement of a portion of fly ash with Calcium Carbonate (CaCO3) powder. In this research work, experimental and Numerical investigations were carried out for the evaluation of the performance of GFRP sections