PSI - Issue 52

Wouter De Corte et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 52 (2024) 99–104 W. De Corte, J. Uyttersprot & W. Van Paepegem / Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2019) 000 – 000

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The most important findings of this paper are summarized in Table 2.

Table 2. Initial Young's modulus and ultimate strength and strain for reference GFRP and hybrid composites Reference GFRP GFRP + Steel A GFRP + Steel B GFRP + Steel wire mesh

Initial Young’s modulus, E i [GPA] Ultimate strength, σ ult [MPa]

22.1 407 2.3%

48.8 (↑ 120%) 51.6 (↑ 130%)

19.4 (↓ 12%) 334 (↓ 18%)

323 (↓ 21%)

330 (↓ 26%)

Ultimate strain, ε ult [-]

2.3%

2.1%

2.3%

4. Conclusions In this paper, three hybrid steel / glass fibre composite laminates are explored, with the aim of increasing the longitudinal stiffness, while maintaining the vacuum infusion based manufacturing process. For this purpose, two perforated steel sheet types with different permeation percentages and one steel wire mesh are chosen, and infused together with a typical glass fibre ply arrangement. The open nature of the steel plates ensure no problems arise concerning the flow of the resin during the infusion process. Tensile testing together with DIC processing was used to study the influence of the addition of steel to the GFRP, mainly the initial stiffness and ultimate strength of the test specimens were taken into account as shown in Table 2. From Table 2 it can be seen that the Young’s modulus for Steel A and Steel B will increase by 120% and 130% respectively, while no significant effect on the stiffness for the steel wire mesh can be seen. Concurrently, the tensile strength reduced by 21% for Steel A and 26% for Steel B, and by 18% for the steel wire mesh. This can be attributed to the incompatibility of ultimate strain of the various materials. However, as the design of web-core sandwich panel based footbridges is dominated by stiffness and typically not by strength (Uyttersprot et al. 2021), hybrid laminates with perforated steel sheets seem to be a promising idea to extend the achievable span or slenderness of FRP footbridges. Acknowledgements This research was made possible by the financial support of the Research foundation Flanders (FWO) with the PhD Fellowship strategic basic research (1S50520N). References Canning, Lee and Sam Luke. 2010. “Development of FRP Bridges in the UK — An Overview.” Advances in Structural Engineering 13(5):823 – 35. De Corte, Wouter, Arne Jansseune, Wim Van Paepegem, and Jan Peeters. 2017. “Structural Behaviour and Robustness Assessme nt of an InfraCore® inside Bridge Deck Specimen Subjected to Static and Dynamic Local Loading.” ICCM International Conferences on Composite Materials 2017-Augus(August):20 – 25. De Corte, Wouter, Arne Jansseune, Wim Van Paepegem, and Jan Peeters. 2018. “Elas tic Properties and Failure Behavior of Tiled Laminate Composites.” Key Engineering Materials 774 KEM:564 – 69. De Corte, Wouter and Jordi Uyttersprot. 2022. “FRP Bridges in the Flanders Region: Experiences from the C - Bridge Project.” Applied Sciences 12(21):10897. Creasy, T. 2012. Sheet Forming in Polymer Matrix Composites . Woodhead Publishing Limited. FiberCore. n.d. “The World’s Longest FRP Bridges Placed in Bruges (Belgium).” Retrieved September 10, 2022 (https://www.fiber core europe.com/en/worlds-longest-frp-bridge/). Liu, S. J. 2012. Injection Molding in Polymer Matrix Composites . Woodhead Publishing Limited. Smits, Joris. 2016. “Fiber -Reinforced Polymer Bridge Design in the Netherlands: Architectural Challenges toward Innovative, Sustainable, and Durable Bridges.” Engineering 2(4):518 – 27. Uyttersprot, Jordi, Wouter De Corte, and Bram Ingelbinck. 2021. “Influence of SLS Design Requirements on the Material Consump tion and Self Weight of Web- Core Sandwich Panel FRP Composite Footbridges.” Composite Structures 262:18. Veltkamp, Martijn and Jan Kroon. n.d. Hybrid Bridge Structure Composed of Fibre Reinforced Polymers and Steel .