FRP COMPOSITES IN STEEL STRUCTURES

Over the past decade, fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) composites have gained wide acceptance as a new generation of structural materials for civil engineering applications due to their unique advantages including their high strength to weight ratio and excellent corrosion resistance. In particular,many possibilities of using FRP in concrete construction have been explored, including the strengthening of existing concrete structures with bonded FRP reinforcement, the use of FRP reinforcing/pre-stressing bars in new concrete structures, and the combination of FRP shapes with concrete to arrive at hybrid FRP-concrete members such as concrete-filled FRP tubular columns. More recently, the use of FRP in steel structures has received much attention. Because both FRP and steel are capable of resisting high tensile stresses, they do not complement each other as well as do FRP and concrete. As a result, the potential for the beneficial use of FRP in steel structures is less than that in concrete structures. This paper first presents a critical discussion of applications where the use of FRP with steel presents significant advantages and then provides a summary of recent research at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University exploring the use of FRP to enhance the performance of steel structures.