Date of Award

6-2004

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Material Science Engineering (MSMatSE)

Department

Materials Science

First Advisor

Dr. Khalil AI- Hosani

Second Advisor

Dr. Adel Hammami

Abstract

In the United Arab Emirates, most of the concrete structures including road, infrastructure and different types of buildings have been reported to be in need of rehabilitation. It is universally acknowledged that the environment of the countries in the Arabian Gulf is extremely severe and very aggressive to construction materials and operations. It is anticipated that the cost of rehabilitation of civil infrastructure will gradually increase over the next decade as a direct consequence of the increase in the number of structures reaching their expected service life.

Accordingly demand on rehabilitation methods will increase. In addition the severe climatic conditions of the country will require additional features for this method such as excellent exposure to high temperature fluctuation, moisture and UV contents. The main reasons of reinforced concrete structure's deterioration are corrosion of the steel bars (because of high temperature and humidity of the UAE environment) or continual upgrading of service loads (increase of the traffic load on bridges for example). The solution to these problems is to either re-build the structure or repair the concrete.

One of the promising solutions to this problem is to use fiber reinforced concrete (FRC) as replacement for the old methods of repair. The advantages of FRP are lightweight, high tensile strength, corrosion resistance, flexibility and electromagnetic resistance. The object cue of this thesis to, investigate the use of FRP as a strengthening method of concrete structures and its long-term performance, especially in the severe climatic conditions prevailing in the Arab Gulf region.

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