Structural performance of a façade precast concrete sandwich panel enabled by a bar-type basalt fiber-reinforced polymer connector

Abstract

In this study, a novel diagonally inserted bar-type basalt fiber reinforced polymer (BFRP) connector was proposed, aiming to achieve both construction convenience and partially composite behavior in precast concrete sandwich panels (PCSPs). First, pull-out tests were conducted to evaluate the anchoring performance of the connector in concrete after exposure to different temperatures. Thereafter, direct shear tests were conducted to investigate the shear performance of the connector. After the test on the individual performance of the connector, five façade PCSP specimens with the bar-type BFRP connector were fabricated, and the out-of-plane flexural performance was tested under a uniformly distributed load. The investigating parameters included the panel length, opening condition, and boundary condition. The results obtained in this study primarily indicated that 1) the bar-type BFRP connector can achieve a reliable anchorage system in concrete; 2) the bar-type BFRP connector can offer sufficient stiffness and capacity to achieve a partially composite PCSP; 3) the boundary condition of the panel considerably influenced the out-of-plane flexural performance and composite action of the investigated façade PCSP.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

precast concrete sandwich panel / basalt fiber reinforced polymer / pull-out performance / shear performance / out-of-plane flexural performance

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Acknowledgements

The research in this paper was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51878233), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. JZ2021HGTA0164), from the Key Research and Development Project of Anhui Province, China (No. 202104a07020022), and from Anhui Provincial Natural Science Foundation (No. 2208085QE172).

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