Development of a new anchorage system for carbon fiber–reinforced polymer rods using extrusion process

Carbon fiber–reinforced polymer (CFRP) rods have been considered as a candidate material for prestressed concrete applications because of their superior properties. For current applications, successful use of CFRP rods is linked to an efficient anchorage system design. This paper presents a newly developed anchorage system for CFRP rods and the design concept that the extrusion process is used to generate gripping force. The proposed anchorage system consists of a steel barrel and an aluminum sleeve, and an extrusion region is designed on the outside of barrel to generate a suitable contact pressure distribution on the CFRP rod. A mathematical model was proposed to estimate the contact pressure on the CFRP rod and the capacity of anchorage system. The simulation of extrusion and loading process was conducted with a three-dimensional (3D) finite-element (FE) model. The key design parameters of anchorage system were analyzed to obtain an optimized parameter combination. The experimental validation showed that the new anchorage system is capable of allowing the CFRP rod to attain the ultimate tensile strength.

Method of Designing a Friction-Based Wedge Anchorage System for High-Strength CFRP Plates

The cables of high-strength carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) plates are starting to be applied to large spatial structures. However, their main anchorage systems rely on the adhesive force, which entails risks to their integrity resulting from aging of the binding agent. In this study, a friction-based wedge anchorage system was designed for CFRP plates. The working mechanism of the proposed anchorage system was explored both theoretically and experimentally. The anti-slip mechanism and condition of CFRP plates were formulated so that the equivalent frictional angle of the contact surface between a CFRP plate and wedges must not be smaller than the sum of the dip angle of the wedge external conical surface and the frictional angle between the wedges and barrel. An analysis of the stress distribution in the anchorage zone of the CFRP plate was conducted using the Tsai-Wu failure criterion, which concluded that the compressive stresses should be reduced on the section closer to the load-bearing end of the anchorage system. Furthermore, the anchorage efficiency coefficient was proposed, which depends on stress concentration coefficients, plate thickness, length of anchorage zone, dip angle of wedge external conical surface, and its frictional angle. Then, it was determined that the minimum length of an anchorage zone for the CFRP plates with various specifications should be at least 49 times larger than the CFRP thickness. A finite element analysis and static tensile tests on six specimens were carried out. The experimental results revealed that the anchorage efficiency coefficient of the optimized anchor reached 97.9%.

Development, Crash Testing, and Evaluation of Steel-Post Trailing-End Guardrail Anchorage System

Trailing-end guardrail anchorage systems are widely used by most state departments of transportation (DOTs) and generally consist of simple adaptations of crashworthy end terminals. The safety performance and structural capacity of these trailing-end anchorage systems, when reverse-direction impacts occur near the end, is imperative in crashworthiness of guardrail systems. In 2013, a non-proprietary trailing-end anchorage system with a modified breakaway cable terminal (BCT) was developed by the Midwest Roadside Safety Facility (MwRSF) for the Midwest Guardrail System (MGS). Although this trailing-end guardrail anchorage system adequately met the Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH) TL-3 safety requirements, the use of two breakaway wood posts was deemed by some users to have several drawbacks. Thus, there was a critical need to develop a non-wood option to anchor the downstream end of the W-beam guardrail system, which led to the need to develop a steel-post trailing-end guardrail anchorage system for use with the MGS. Following the design and component testing of such a system, two full-scale crash tests were performed according to the MASH 2016 test designation nos. 3-37a and 3-37b. In the first test, a 2270P pickup truck struck the guardrail system and was adequately contained and redirected. In the second test, an 1100C small car struck the barrier and safely gated through the barrier. Both tests were deemed acceptable according to TL-3 safety criteria in MASH 2016. Recommendations are provided for the installation of a steel-post trailing-end guardrail anchorage system when used in combination with MGS.

An Application of Time-Frequency-Based Analysis Method for Identifying Bolt Anchorage System

A rock bolt refers to a reinforcing bar used commonly in geotechnical engineering. Also, defect identification of bolt anchorage system determines the safe operation of the reinforced structures. In the present paper, to accurately extract defect information, a CNN model based on time-frequency analysis is proposed, covering both time-domain and frequency-domain information. The effect of the number of convolution kernels on the defect identification results is discussed. By laboratory experiments, the performances of STFT-based CNN with those of time-domain input or frequency-domain input-based 1D CNN are compared, and the results demonstrate that the proposed method showed enhanced performance in identification accuracy.