A Novel Technique for Stiffening Steel Structures Introduction

The use of composite materials for strengthening the ailing infrastructure has steadily gained acceptance and market share. Employing composite materials in strengthening of steel structures is the subject of this study. There are several challenges that face strengthening steel structures using composite materials. The superior mechanical properties of steel result in a reduction in the efficiency of composite strengthening. Hence, it is often cited that high modulus composites are needed to improve the effectiveness of the strengthening system. This study explores a novel composites strengthening technique that is particularly suited for thin-walled steel structures. The proposed technique relies on improving the out-of-plane stiffness of buckling prone members by bonding pultruded fiber reinforced polymers (FRP) sections as opposed to the commonly used strengthening approach that relies on in-plane FRP contribution.