Obtaining a permanent repair by using GFRP in steel plates reformed by heat-treatment

Abstract

Applying heat treatment to buckled steel construction elements especially at the time of disaster, are accepted as temporary repairs. This study aims to turn temporary retrofits applied to steel structural elements into permanent repairs using an additional operation. To this end, experimental and numerical investigations were conducted to remedy weaknesses observed in elements repaired with heat treatment by gluing fiber-reinforced polymer plates to them. Experimental and parametric studies show that a permanent repair can be achieved by affixing GFRP plates to locally buckled steel structures after heat treatment In addition, a formula is presented to calculate the critical buckling stress in GFRP-reinforced steel plates based on the slenderness ratio. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.