Mr Abdul Mahboob SAMSOR

Research project: Aspects of Multi-rowed Bolted Connections in Pultruded Fibre Reinforced Polymer Structures

Abstract

Pultruded fibre reinforced polymer (PFRP) composites have high specific strength and stiffness compared with those of conventional structural materials such as concrete and steel. Pultruded composites also have several different advantages such as non-magnetic and non-conductive properties, high resistance to corrosion and chemical attack. Due to their excellent physical, chemical, and mechanical properties, PFRP composites are widely used in the civil engineering and construction nowadays (Kim et al., 2018). Although during last two decades a large number of studies on PFRP structures (REF) have been conducted, yet there is a lack of fundamental criteria needed to develop a guideline for the standard in design and construction of these structures. A special emphasis should be put on the connections, which are the most critical members in any kind of structures (Mottram and Zafari, 2011). To join several components, bolted connections are often selected due to their several advantages (Mottram and Zafari, 2011). It is recognised that the design and verification of a multi-rowed bolted connection for pultruded structural materials is a complex procedure (Mottram, 2013). Therefore, characterization testing programme is required to determine for static loading the strengths and failure modes. The test matrix involves material thicknesses, steel bolt size and hole diameters found in practice.

The outcome of this proposed study will establish and verify a number of closed formed formulae for the identified modes of failure. To transfer these formulae into procedures in a structural design standard (such as an FRP Eurocode) they will be calibrated for their partial factors of resistance and range of applicability.