The concept of steel sheet glass fiber reinforced polymer(GFRP)composite bar(SSGCB)was put forward.An optimization plan was proposed in the combined form of SSGCB.The composite principle,material selection,and SSGCB preparation technology have been described in detail.Three-dimensional finite element analysis was adopted to perform the combination form optimization of different steel core structures and different steel core contents based on the mechanical properties.Mechanical tests such as uniaxial tensile,shear,and compressive tests were carried out on SSGCB.Parametric analysis was conducted to investigate the influence of steel content on the mechanical properties of SSGCB.The results revealed that the elastic modulus of SSGCB had improvements and increased with the rise of steel content.Shear strength was also increased with the addition of steel content.Furthermore,the yield state of SSGCB was similar to the steel bar,both of which indicated a multi-stage yield phenomenon.The compressive strength of SSGCB was lower than that of GFRP bars and increased with the increase of the steel core content.Stress-strain curves of SSGCB demonstrated that the nonlinear-stage characteristics of SSGCB-8 were much more obvious than other bars.
To investigate the effect of different environmental conditions of GFRP bars in concrete beams with work cracks subjected to sustained loads, the beams were exposed in indoor, freeze/thaw cycles and immersed in alkaline solution at elevated temperature. The bars were carefully extracted from the beams and tested in order to evaluate residual tensile properties. The results show that the tensile strength decreased significantly in the highly aggressive conditions but not in the natural conditions. The effect of GFRP bars casting in concrete beams demonstrated approximately 2.5% decrease of tensile strength caused by pore water environment in concrete beams on basis of those of the original bars. The effect of sustained loading plus work cracks demonstrated about 10.5% tensile strength decrease on basis of those of the bars only casted in concrete beams. The effect of environments under sustained loading plus work cracks demonstrated about 17% tensile strength decrease caused by a saturated solution of Ca（OH）2 and 60-2 ℃ tap water （pH=12-13） and about 8% tensile strength decrease caused by freezing and thawing cycle （F/T）, both on basis of those of the bars of the indoor beams only under sustained loading plus work cracks. The results demonstrate the effects of the tensile strengths under different environmental conditions of GFRP bars in concrete beams with work cracks subjected to sustained loads.
