Benefits of Grooving on Vacuum-Assisted Resin Transfer Molding FRP Wet-Out of RC Beams

作者：Ramos L^*; Uddin N; Parrish M

来源：Journal of Composites for Construction, 2013, 17(5): 636-640.

DOI：10.1061/(ASCE)CC.1943-5614.0000365

• Concrete beams
• Fiber reinforced polymer
• Vacuum
• Epoxy
• Pressurized flow
• Flow measurement
• Concrete beams
• Fiber-reinforced polymer
• Vacuum
• Epoxy
• Pressurized flow
• Flow measurement

Fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) externally bonded to RC beams is commonly applied by hand layup. Vacuum-assisted resin transfer molding (VARTM), a novel application method in infrastructure, can produce FRP with more-consistent quality and uniformity. Additional steps are required, however, which can increase the application time and cost. This research will investigate the reduction of VARTM wet-out time achieved by sawing grooves into the concrete surface. Fiber-reinforced polymer U-jackets are applied by VARTM to beams with vertical grooves. The wet-out of the beams is recorded and timed. Results indicate that beams with 3.2-mm-deep grooves achieve 95% wet-out in an average of 200s. This is only 22% of the time it takes to wet-out a beam with no grooves, an average of 911s. A wet-out mechanism based on a modified Darcy%26apos;s law is presented to verify the results. Darcy%26apos;s law predicts that time savings increase exponentially with the length that the epoxy has to travel, which indicates that a significant amount of time could be saved on actual girders.

• 出版日期2013-10-1