The paper “GFRP beam-to-column connection using stainless steel cleats” by David Martins, José Gonilha, João Correia and Nuno Silvestre was distinguished with the “Best Paper Award” in the category “FRP in new construction” by the International Institute for FRP in Construction (IIFC), on occasion of the 10th International Conference on Fibre-Reinforced Polymer (FRP) Composites in Civil Engineering (CICE 2020/2021), held in Istanbul, Turkey on December 8-10, 2021.
Below you can find the abstract for this paper:
“Pultruded glass fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP) profiles are increasingly finding their way in civil engineering structural applications. The design of GFRP connections between profiles is of great relevance, as they influence the members’ deflections and often govern design at ultimate limit states, being prone to brittle failure modes. The first part of this paper presents an experimental campaign on the monotonic and cyclic behaviour of beam-to-column connections using stainless steel cleats. Stainless steel was chosen for the cleats owing to its corrosion resistance (compatible with GFRP) and its ductility. In order to maximize strength and/or ductility, several cleat configurations were tested, varying their wall thickness, length, number of bolts and back flange reinforcement. The results show that this connection system, particularly with back flange reinforcement, presents significant ductility and energy dissipation capacity. In the second part of the paper, a design-oriented analytical study is presented, based on the component method and (common) steel structural design procedures, to estimate the stiffness and strength of the connections – the method was able to predicted with reasonable accuracy the behaviour of the connections.”
The full paper can be found here.