Behavior of AFRP Composite and its Practical Aspects in the Invigoration of Structural and Materialistic Properties of Corroded SHTS
Authors:   Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Anand Institute of Higher Technology, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India., Modak Nabajyoti , Das Durlab ,   Completed M. Tech in Aeronautical Engineering, Hindustan Institute of Technology and Science, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India., Kumar R. Vinodh ,   Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering,, Meenakshi College of Engineering, Chennai, Tamil Nadu.
Published: January 2020

The usage of effective composite materials currently became a regular trend in different field of industrial works and production factories. Composite materials being having a property of fulfilling more than one property simultaneously became an effective material recently in practical life. Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) composite, due to its low weight, high stiffness huge load carrying capacity, corrosion less property, it became a friendly material for different engineering purposes where materials get include. In the world of Civil Engineering, Aeronautical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Automobile Engineering, currently the trend of FRP became very familiar for increasing the strength of materials for different properties and from different orientations. Strengthening and retrofitting of any structural elements become mandatory when the structure gets distressed due to several loading and aging effects. This research paper contains the concept of Aramid Fiber Reinforced Polymer (AFRP) composite and its application in the strengthening of corroded Steel Hollow Tubular Sections (SHTS). The improvement in the properties of SHTS after applying AFRP is discussed in this research content and its polymerization effect on strengthening. To establish a comparison on the recent research trend in this area, a special way of retrofication scheme was involved in this investigation, by following a practice of spiral or helical wrapping of AFRP to achieve a continues stiffness with a uniform unity across the height of the column. To analyze the proposed strengthening scheme, a comparative study has been done with respect to the traditional approach. A series of experimental investigation was done to come up with the result and later a brief discussion has been done regarding the usage of AFRP in different fields of Engineering. Totally 21 samples were casted both in horizontal and spiral jacketing and tested experimentally under axial compressive load by sustaining several parameters to observe the variation in the change of the properties of SHTS to verify the axial load carrying capacity along with the stiffness and Young’s modulus. The experimental investigation showed that there is a remarkable improvement in the properties of AFRP strengthened specimens with respect to different parameters after the application AFRP and the effect of its polymerization with the bonding agent. Thus after the strengthening of column specimens with AFRP, the overall increment in the load ringing capacity of the SHTS was 23.27% and also the proposed scheme of spiral wrapping provided a superior result as compared to the traditional method of horizontal stripping.