Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

After the Second World War, rebuilding and growth in the construction industry led
to a large work load and much of the work was procured by the state with increasing
bureaucracy in standards and specifications and little research and development. The
international tensions which ensued during these years, ensured that the pattern of
massive state investment in defence research remained and entrepreneurs in private
industry ignored construction and turned their attention to transport leading to rapid
development of the automotive and aerospace industries. Thus the legacy of this lack of
investment in research and development in construction is clearly illustrated by the lack
of progress, where over the past forty years, construction methods have changed little.
It is therefore not surprising that the plastics/composites industry did not show interest
in the civil engineering industry where the possibility of utilizing new materials and
therefore market opportunities were not visible to potential investors. The technological
revolution in materials and processing in all other sectors of the manufacturing industry
has largely by-passed the construction industry.
In 1994, the Latham Report (1994) was published and regarded the construction
industry as low technology, low skill and labour intensive compared with most other
industries. The mismatch between research investment and construction expenditure has
meant that construction has proceeded on a scale with an inadequate understanding of
many aspects such as deterioration mechanism for structures and this has often meant
that due allowance has not been made for practical repair and maintenance. However,
notwithstanding this report, there have been encouraging signs that within the last ten
years the transition from the conventional materials to the more advanced materials is
being spearheaded by the construction industry where 30% of all polymers produced
are now utilized in that industry. The gradual acceptance of composites, made from
fibre reinforced polymers, has begun, particularly as research and development into new
fibres and matrix materials and automated fabrication processes relevant to applications
in the construction industry have grown rapidly.
By exploring the evolution of engineering materials an understanding of the sig-
nificance, interest and use of polymers and composites in construction will be more
readily appreciated. In 1987 a discussion was held at the Royal Society where a number
of points were made regarding the evolution of materials throughout the ages. The
following has been taken from this discussion.
Before 2000 B.C. cutting tools were mostly made of flint. Flint is a ceramic and
was an important material in an age when stone, pottery and wood were almost the
only engineering materials. Metals were unknown. Flint had a special role because it
2 Advanced polymer composites and polymers in the civil infrastructure

could be shaped to a cutting edge and used as a weapon or as a knife. It was one
of the engineering materials of the stone age, or — as we would now call it — the
age of ceramics. It was an era in which metals played almost no role and engineering
(housing, boats, weapons, utensils) was dominated by polymers (wood, straw, skins),
composites (like straw bricks) and ceramics (stone, pottery and later, glass). As ways
were discovered to make metals, they began to displace ceramics. Around 1500 B.C.
the consumption of bronze and later iron probably revealed who were the world powers.
Since 1850 it has been steel; economists correlate the level of development of a
country with the quantity of steel it produces per head of population. From this point
on, the metals dominated engineering design. Their position was strengthened by the
development of the alloy steels, the light alloys (replacing wood in aircraft design) and
the superalloys. By 1960 'materials' was synonymous with 'metallurgy'; the world's
universities taught courses and awarded degrees in metallurgy and metal science; the
graduates had barely heard of polymers, ceramics and composites. However, in the past
twenty years that has changed. The steel industry, world wide, is declining and the rate
of materials — high-strength polymers, ceramics, structure composites — is expanding,
or is poised to do so. The production of carbon-fibre based composites for instance, is
growing at about 30% per year; that is the sort of growth rate enjoyed by steel at the
peak of the industrial revolution. We are now in the middle of another revolution, a
transition from the steel age to one dependent on other, more advanced materials.
Large investments are currently being made by the US Government in conjunction
with private industry in the High Peiformance Construction Materials and Systems. The
proposed materials include advanced polymer composites and systems in which these
materials are employed include new methods of construction and robotics.
Government initiatives in Europe have been slower than those in the USA, but
the UK Government has launched two initiatives with similar objectives to those in the
USA, under the control of the EPSRC; these are the 'Innovative Manufacturing Initiative
1994' and the 'Materials for Better Construction Programme 1994'.
With the sudden ending of the cold war at the beginning of the 1990s, the realization
that the environmental issues will need to be addressed and the change in international
politics have all contributed to the turbulence in many industries not least the construc-
tion industry. Many of the younger dynamic industries such as the composites industry,
however, have been able to adapt and to take advantage of the turbulent situations more
readily than the more traditional industries. These observations have been confirmed
by the increased utilization of GFRP and CFRP in the construction industry over the
last ten years. The rapidly growing interest in the use of advanced composites in the
construction industry, is fueled by the need to improve durability, to reduce site labour
costs and construction time and to improve safety. Several companies around the world
are manufacturing standard composite structural members which are used for decking
and walkway systems in waste water treatment plants, off shore structures and many
other industries. Computer centres and hospital magnetic resonance imaging rooms are
manufactured from composites because the material does not conduct electronic waves.
The world's first road bridge using composite material is at Dusseldorf, Germany where
in 1986, the 16 metre wide 47 metre span bridge used pre-stressed glass fibre/polyester
resin pultruded rods. In Austria, a jetty and boat landing stage was built using blow
 Chapter 1. Introduction 3

mould composite pontoons held together by bolts. In the USA, Europe and Japan
many demonstration structures have been built using carbon, aramid and glass fibres, to
reinforce and pre-stress concrete in place of steel, to upgrade existing structures and to
manufacture advanced polymer structures.
There is now a much greater awareness of the importance of design in relation
to product performance and reliability. However, standard specifications and codes of
practice do not yet exist in civil and structural engineering applications of composites,
except for the British Standard Code of Practice for the design of composites, and is
BS4994: 1973, and therefore, the vitally important items of reliability and performance
are difficult to address, unless through specific proven systems.
Before studying the subject of advanced polymer composites, it is essential for the
reader to have a clear understanding of the meaning of that material. Therefore, the
definition which was adopted, in 1989, by the Study Group (on Advanced Polymer
Composites) of the Institution of Structural Engineers, will be given here. It was
developed, for the construction industry, from that produced up by the British Plastics
Federation. The definition is as follows.
"Composite materials consist normally of two discrete phases, a continuous
matrix which is often a resin, surrounding a fibrous reinforcing structure.
The reinforcement has high strength and stiffness whilst the matrix binds
the fibres together, allowing stress to be transferred from one fibre to
another producing a consolidated structure.In advanced or high performance
composites, high strength and stiffness fibres are used in relatively high
volume fractions whilst the orientation of the fibres is controlled to enable
high mechanical stresses to be carried safely. In the anisotropic nature
of these materials lies their major advantage. The reinforcement can be
tailored and orientated to follow the stress patterns in the component leading
to much greater design economy than can be achieved with traditional
isotropic materials.The reinforcements are typically glass, carbon or aramid
fibres in the form of continuous filament, tow or woven fabrics. The resins
which confer distinctive properties such as heat, fibre or chemical resistance
may be chosen from a wide spectrum of thermosetting or thermoplastic
synthetic materials, and those commonly used are polyester, epoxy and
phenolic resins. More advanced heat resisting types such as vinylester and
bismaleimides are gaining usages in high performance applications and
advanced carbon fibre/thermoplastic composites are well into a market
development phase."
Few natural materials consist of one substance only, most are a mixture of different
components which when combined together produce a material which is more able to
perform its function than a single substance. These materials are known as composites.
Bone, for instance, achieves its combination of lightness and strength by combining
crystals of apatite (a compound of calcium) with fibres of the protein collagen.
Wood, the most widely used structural material from earliest times, is an example
of a naturally occurring composite material. Another example of a civil engineering
composite material is reinforced concrete.
4 Advanced polymer composites and polymers in The civil infrastructure

The range of fibre/matrix composites is very diverse. Carbon, glass and aramid fibres
are the ones mainly used in civil engineering, although there are many other fibres on
the market. These fibres are placed in a thermosetting or thermoplastic polymer resin to
obtain higher strength and stiffness values of the matrix material.
Composite materials are made (see Chapter 3) by controlled distribution of one or
more materials, the reinforcement (phase 1). in a continuous phase of a second, the
matrix (phase 2). The boundary between the matrix and the reinforcement, the interface
(phase 3), is controlled to obtain the desired properties from a given pair of materials.
When dissipation of impact energy is required, the interface may be made weaker by
minimizing the chemical coupling of the reinforcement to the matrix. However, it is
much more likely that the coupling between the two phases (1 and 2) is maximized,
this interfacial coupling will then allow stresses, dispersed through the matrix, to be
transferred to the reinforcement. Coupling is provided by wetting the reinforcement by
the matrix in molten or low viscosity state.
The matrix plays several important roles in the overall composite characteristics.
It bonds the reinforcement together in the correct design configuration, it protects the
reinforcement against abrasion or environmental corrosion. The load carried by the
composite is distributed to the fibres via the matrix. To be able to transfer the loads
and to reduce the chance of failure in the matrix, adhesion to the reinforcement must
be coupled with sufficient matrix shear strength which, in general, is proportional to
the tensile strength. However, high strength matrices tend to be brittle and when high
tensile and flexural properties are provided by strong and stiff, but brittle reinforcement,
fracture toughness is provided by the plastic flow at crack tips in the matrix, which
absorbs energy and reduces stress concentrafion. Plastically deforming matrices also
deflect cracks parallel to fibres in one plane.
This book will examine and will give a simple guide to the significant developments
that have taken place over the last decade, concerning advanced polymer composites
in the civil engineering construction. In addition, it will discuss the techniques utilized
in construction in order to manufacture advanced composites and to combine these
composites with concrete and steel. Furthermore, it gives illustrative examples of
structures and bridge construction which have been built from various all composite
fabrication systems.