Mechanical characterization of pultruded GFRP channel, wide flange and rectangular hollow profiles

This paper presents a comprehensive study on the mechanical properties and behaviour of glass fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP) pultruded profiles of various shapes and sizes. An extensive experimental programme considering a large number of coupon tests has been conducted to obtain tensile, compression, interlaminar shear and in-plane shear properties of the GFRP profiles. Differences in the mean material properties obtained from flanges and webs are found to be in the range of 0.7‒33.7%. Based on the material characteristic properties, design stresses and moduli are obtained considering four design guidelines, namely the Italian guideline, ASCE, EUROCOMP and EU’s CEN Technical Committee 250. The results confirm considerable differences in the range of 8.6‒73% for design stress and 8.6‒89.6% for modulus values obtained according to these guidelines.