Improving Fatigue Performance of GFRP Composite Using Carbon Nanotubes

Fibers

Moneeb Genedy²  Sherif Daghash³  Eslam Soliman¹  Mahmoud M. Reda Taha² 

[1] Department of Civil Engineering, Assuit University, Assuit 71515, Egypt; E-Mail:;Department of Civil Engineering, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87106, USA; E-Mail:;Department of Civil Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22901, USA; E-Mail:

关键词: carbon nanotubes;    GFRP;    applications;    fatigue;   

DOI  :  10.3390/fib3010013

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Glass fiber reinforced polymers (GFRP) have become a preferable material for reinforcing or strengthening reinforced concrete structures due to their corrosion resistance, high strength to weight ratio, and relatively low cost compared with carbon fiber reinforced polymers (CFRP). However, the limited fatigue life of GFRP hinders their use in infrastructure applications. For instance, the low fatigue life of GFRP caused design codes to impose stringent stress limits on GFRP that rendered their use non-economic under significant cyclic loads in bridges. In this paper, we demonstrate that the fatigue life of GFRP can be significantly improved by an order of magnitude by incorporating Multi-Wall Carbon Nanotubes (MWCNTs) during GFRP fabrication. GFRP coupons were fabricated and tested under static tension and cyclic tension with mean fatigue stress equal to 40% of the GFRP tensile strength. Microstructural investigations using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy were used for further investigation of the effect of MWCNTs on the GFRP composite. The experimental results show the 0.5 wt% and the 1.0 wt% MWCNTs were able to improve the fatigue life of GFRP by 1143% and 986%, respectively, compared with neat GFRP.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.