Fatigue behavior of GFRP-concrete composite decks: An experimental and numerical study

In order to ensure the safety of glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP)-concrete composite bridge deck, its static and fatigue behaviors were studied by both experimental and numerical method in this paper. First, static and fatigue loading tests were carried out to investigate the mechanical properties of the GFRP-concrete composite slab. The experimental results indicated that the composite bridge deck had a good fatigue resistance. Then, a finite element model was built and the accuracy of the model was verified by comparing the simulated results with the static experiment. Third, corresponding constitutive models and failure criterions were introduced to simulate the fatigue performance of GFRP-concrete composite slab by using both finite element method and theoretical layered method. Generally, the calculated values were in good agreement with the test values, and the proposed method can be used to predict the deflection and strain of the components. Finally, parametric analysis was conducted to investigate the stiffness degradation of the composite structure.