Engineering plastic gripping mechanism for tension testing of FRP bars

Abstract

A new grip adaptor, made of an engineering plastic Cast Polyamide 6 (PA6G), was developed for tension testing of FRP reinforcing bars. The new adaptor offers several advantages over conventional anchors, including the ease of application and reuse, being economical, no need for skilled labor, smaller difference between the hardness of the adaptors and sample. Bars with three different diameters (6, 8 and 12 mm), three types of fiber (Carbon, Glass and Basalt) and four types of surface texture (ribbed, wound, fine-sand coated and coarse-sand coated with widely-spaced wrapping) were tested to failure under uniaxial tension. Two identical bars were tested for each combination of parameters (fiber type, surface texture and bar diameter), one with PA6G and the other with grout-filled steel anchors. The tests indicated that the proposed method was able to ensure FRP bars to reach their tensile capacities and fail by rupture without crushing in the gripping regions and pull-out from the jaws of the testing machine. The modulus of elasticity, tensile strength and ultimate strain values of the bars with PA6G anchors were in rather close agreement with the respective values of specimens with conventional steel anchors. This close agreement, i.e. mostly a difference below 5%, implies the success of the proposed method. Among all tested bars, only the ribbed ones failed in the gripping regions in the presence of both anchors as a result of the limited contact surface (rib area), pointing out the need for the use of longer anchors for ribbed bars.