Fire performance of durable concrete structures reinforced with Fibre Reinforced Polymer (FRP) bars

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The financial burden and the environmental impacts of replacing a large number of decaying and crumbling structures are onerous. With over 4 billion tons of cement produced annually, the cement industry produces 8% of global CO2 emissions on the planet. The highest-ever concerns regarding climate change and demands civil engineering society to seek more sustainable, durable, and long-lasting construction materials and methods. Fibre Reinforced Polymer (FRP) reinforcement is a viable alternative for the corrosion-prone steel reinforcement in reinforced concrete (RC) structures. There is adequate knowledge on FRP RC structural members at ambient temperature, and FRP reinforcement has been successfully used in many concrete structures. However, there is a lack of a holistic understanding of the fire performance of FRP RC structures in fires. The existing knowledge critically lacks extensive experimental and numerical studies which would ultimately allow moving towards generating rational, practical and detailed design guidelines for fire safety of FRP RC structures. This proposal supports a comprehensive research program with the overarching objective of achieving an in-depth and fundamental understanding of the structural performance of FRP reinforced concrete members and structures. The long-term objective of the proposed research program is to gain fundamental understandings leading to rational and performance-based fire safety design of FRP RC structures. This program aims to ensure the fire safety of FRP RC and public safety before massive FRP RC constructions can finally be undertaken. To accomplish the long-term goals, the specific short-term objectives are to: (1) further characterize the bond behaviour of FRP reinforcing bars at high temperatures and investigate the effects of higher glass transition temperature on the bond performance; (2) conduct medium and large-scale fire tests on FRP RC structural components; and (3) extend the modelling capabilities from single-member level to a more sophisticated structural level to examine the full-frame response in fire. The practical implications of this research program will serve the needs of Canadian as well as international codes (e.g. ACI 440.1R) for key updates. Canada has always held a leading role in developing provisions for FRP reinforcement (e.g. CSA-S6 and CSA-S806), and these codes are used around the world. The CSA-S806 uniquely has detailed provisions for fire safety design of FRP RC slabs which need to be directed towards more rational and performance-based design approaches. The current and prescriptive design guidelines recommend the thickening of concrete cover which lowers the design efficiency and requires a substantial amount of expensive FRP to be used. This research program will train 9 HQP, and they will be the future's professional engineers and researchers in Canada to fulfill the structural fire safety requirements.