An Investigation on Static Analysis of Pultruded GFRP Composite Beams
Emrah Madenci, Yasin Onuralp Özkılıç, Lokman Gemi
Abstract
Composite materials, which have been used especially in the construction sector to strength beams and columns, have been produced in pultruded GFRP profiles with different geometries with the pultrusion method. Pultruded GFRP profiles are an alternative to traditional building elements in many construction applications thanks to their superior properties such as high strength, chemical resistance, thermal and electrical insulation. Pultruded GFRP profiles are exposed to various loads and change shapes due to the effect of these loads. It is very important to determine the load and deformation capacities as structural members. These profiles are often exposed to bending while serving as beams. In this study, a multiscale analysis of the deflection and stress behavior of pultruded GFRP composite beam is presented. The proposed formulations are verified using experimental and numerical studies. For experimental study, three types of specimens which were extracted from a pultruded profile with dimensions of 150x100x6 were utilized. For numerical study, a commercial finite element software Abaqus was used. The analytical results were compared with both experimental and finite element results. The differences between analytical results and the experimental and numerical findings are less than 1% which indicates an excellent agreement.