Feasibility of utilizing waste GFRP pipes as lateral reinforcement for rectangular reinforced concrete short columns

Abstract EN

Since 1980, Egyptian government investment has being directed to the infrastructure projects.

Water supply and water drainage networks are among those projects which are very costly, therefore they are designed with a life span of about one hundred years.

There is a new trend towards the use of durable and maintenance free systems.

The "GFRP" pipes are one of the economic solutions if the project life span is taken into consideration.

A number of investors currently produce the "GFRP" pipes in the Egyptian market.

They follow the latest technologies in their production lines, however they still suffer 2-5 % deficiency of their produced pipes, which consequently regarded as rejected pipes.

There was a successful attempt to use such pipes as transverse reinforcement for short circular columns, which was published by the author (M.

Sayed 2005).

The present paper focuses on the feasibility of applying the factory rejected "GFRP" pipes as transverse reinforcement for rectangular columns after sawing them into slices of intended width.

The main parameters which control the use of such pipes were considered, including the slice width, spacing, and configuration.

An experimental program consisting of nine short rectangular columns was designed to cover all the governing parameters.

Although the experimental results showed that columns laterally reinforced by GFRP slices have a comparable behavior to conventionally reinforced concrete columns, An additional research efforts are needed to validate the use of the proposed system in the practical field.