Enhancing structural behaviour of polypropylene fibre concrete columns longitudinally reinforced with fibreglass bars

Abstract The research aims to study the behaviour of concrete columns reinforced with fibreglass as bars exposed to seawater. Firstly, hardened concrete properties as the compressive strength and the tensile strength were investigated at ages 14, 28, and 56 days. Secondly, the experimental testing also involved casting 18 short concrete columns that have a length of 300 mm with the cross-sectional dimensions of 100 mm × 100 mm. Six samples were plain concrete, six were reinforced with a diameter of 6 mm longitudinal fibreglass bars, and six polypropylene fibre concrete columns were reinforced with a diameter of 6 mm fibreglass bars. The results added useful information using fibreglass bars (anti-corrosion materials) as reinforced longitudinal concrete columns, so the ultimate load of the reinforced concrete column with fibreglass rod exposed to seawater was 174.8 kN that it was higher than that of the plain concrete column at 104.9 kN. Thus, the fibreglass reinforcement technology enhances the capacity of the columns. So, it could be used in non-impacting structural parts. Meanwhile, the ultimate load of the fibre-reinforced concrete column with fibreglass rod exposed to seawater was 201.8 kN. It is 15.4% higher than that of the ultimate axial load of the reinforced concrete column with fibreglass rods only. Also, the results achieved of this research were encouraging, as the maximum failure load for short columns reinforced with fibreglass rods reached approximately 84 to 87% of failure load relative to polypropylene fibre concrete columns containing reinforcing fibreglass bars. As a result, the structural behaviour bars have been enhanced using fibreglass rod and polypropylene fibre.