Flexural stiffness characterization of fiber reinforced plastic (FRP) pultruded beams

The design of GFRP beams is often governed by deflection limits in service, hence it becomes crucial to evaluate accurately their flexural stiffness. In this work, the flexural stiffness of GFRP pultruded profiles is evaluated experimentally, numerically and analytically. A procedure that simultaneously yields the flexural and the shear modulus of GFRP pultruded profiles directly from 3-point bending tests is applied. Direct tension and 3-point bending tests on coupons extracted from these profiles were also conducted. The TBT and the FEM were applied to analyze the profiles under bending, using material properties estimated by CLT. Comparisons of numerical, analytical and experimental results are presented and discussed at the end. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.