Soft Pre-stressed PET Profiles as reinforcing fibers in structural elements made of concrete

Abstract

The inclusion of pre-stressed PET profiles as reinforcing fibers in structural elements is proposed. The PET-profiles are placed in a unidirectional and bidirectional fiber matrix with soft pre-tensioned condition that they could have advantages in structural members made of concrete in some precise applications, for instance, structural support for road safety barriers. A universal machine is used to test PET-profiles with different width, knots and even other conditions. The desired PET profile is chosen and the concrete mixture is designed under the ACI standard guidance. Pre-stressed PET-profiles are included in wood molds shaped in beam-type and subsequently flexural strength is estimated. Finally, experimental tests results are presented for PET-profiles as structural reinforcement of beams made of concrete under pure flexural. Finally, a probabilistic model is used to estimate the PET contribution in terms of exceedance of the rupture modulus.

Keywords

• PET profiles
• fiber matrix
• beams-type
• concrete
• Pre-stress
• PET fibers
• probabilistic model