Design and Evaluation of a New Resin-Filled GFRP Pipe Connection System for Butt Splicing of FRP Bars

Fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) bars are one of the promising alternatives for steel bars used in concrete structures under corrosion or non-magnetic environments due to the unique physical properties of FRP materials. When compared with steel bars, FRP bars are difficult to be spliced in field application due to their anisotropy and low shear and compressive strengths. In view of this, the paper presents a new non-metallic connection system (i.e., resin-filled glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) pipe connection system) for the butt splicing of FRP bars. With the proposed connection system and a simplified trilinear interfacial bond-slip model, a set of design formulas were derived based on the requirement that the proposed connection system should provide a load transfer capacity beyond the tensile capacity of the spliced FRP bars (i.e., to fulfill the high tensile strength of FRP materials). Besides, considering the fabrication error-induced load transfer capacity reduction of the connection system in field application, a correction factor was introduced in the paper to compensate for the reduced load transfer capacity by increasing the FRP bar anchorage length. At last, to estimate the effectiveness of the proposed connection system and the derived design formulas, nine specimens were fabricated with a kind of commercially available basalt fiber-reinforced polymer (BFRP) bars and the designed connection system and tested under unidirectional tension to study their tensile performance. With the comparison between the tested and theoretical results, the effectiveness of the proposed connection system and the derived design formulas are verified.