Dr. Abdul-Hamid Zureick (Georgia Tech)

"Structural Design of Polymer Composite Materials for New Construction and for Rehabilitation of Structures" (30 minutes)

High-performance polymeric composite materials are major candidates for use in new construction and also for the rehabilitation of existing structures. When designed and constructed properly, these unique materials offer numerous advantages such as light weight, corrosion resistance, thermal and electromagnetic properties, and tailorability to meet specific requirements. Because of their light weight, lower transportation cost and rapid construction time often lead to substantial cost reductions. For these reasons, numerous U.S. and international organizations devoted efforts, during the past 30 years, to develop design guidelines, standards, and specifications that address the use of polymer composites in civil engineering construction projects. These first-generation guidelines and standards have also been the subject of further refinement and revisions due to the emergence of new research and development results.
In this lecture, an overview of the use of polymeric composites in new construction (bridges, buildings, petrochemical processing and refining facilities, and telecommunication structures) and also in the rehabilitation of existing bridge and building structures will be presented. Specific design criteria that will be discussed include those from the 1) AASHTO Guide Specifications for Design of Bonded FRP Systems for Repair and Strengthening of Concrete Bridge Elements and 2) ASCE Pre-Standard for Load and Resistance Factor Design (LRFD) of Pultruded Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Structures.