Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer Retrofitted Hollow Columns

Rectangular hollow bridge piers are commonly used for flyover and bridge infrastructure construction in countries with active seismic activity such as Taiwan, Japan and China due to its higher ductility and low contribution of mass to seismic response. Due to increasing live load with time as traffic level increases, structural strengthening work of hollow bridge piers are necessary to extend service life of bridge or flyover infrastructure. Fibre Reinforced Polymer (FRP) wrapped hollow column also has improved seismic energy and static load dispersion capacity and suitable to be used as vertical structure members in building construction. In economic aspect, full FRP wrap incurs high cost due to high requirement of FRP materials. This book provides a detailed information on the design methodology, fabrication method and structural behaviour of hollow structural column bonded externally using discrete glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) strips subjected to concentric loading. The use of discrete GFRP strips retrofitting configuration offers cost saving and optimized use of the FRP materials.