Fiber breakage occurring in fiber bundles of plain-woven glass fabric composites is investigated under tension/shear biaxial cyclic stress. The experimental results show an existence of the strong effect of biaxial stress ratio on fiber breakage and its accumulation. Under pure tension (uniaxial) loading, the variation of fiber breakage ratio with respect to loading cycles is divided into two stages in the longitudinal fiber bundles. In the first stage, the fiber breakage scarcely occurs. In the final stage, fibers in a fiber bundle are broken remarkably. Under the biaxial cyclic stress, the fiber breakage in the longitudinal fiber bundle is observed in initial fatigue stage. In the case of the biaxial stress with large shear stress component, the fiber breakage is also observed in the transverse fiber bundle. The fiber breakage is accelerated by the combined stress with large shear stress component, which is called the shear constraint effect.

The past decade has witnessed an ever increasing interest in strengthening, repairing, retrofitting, and upgrading of deteriorated concrete structures using fiber reinforced plastics (FRP). Enhanced load carrying capacity by FRP strengthening has been observed by a large number of researchers through experiments at ambient environments. In a harsh environment, however, FRP will degrade. This may result in structural degradation of FRP strengthened concrete members. The possible structural degradation has become a major obstacle for the wide-spread acceptance of this new strengthening technique. In the present study, boiling water and ultraviolet (UV) radiation are used to study the structural degradation of concrete beams strengthened with GRFP and CFRP fabrics. A total of eighteen 170 × 7.62 × 15.2 cm steel reinforced concrete (RC) beams are prepared as control specimens, conditioned specimens, and unconditioned specimens. The test results show that environmental attacks have a considerable effect on the structural degradation of FRP strengthened concrete beams. 57% ∼ 76% of the strengthening efficiency of FRP is lost after conditioning.

Use of syntactic foam as core material in the sandwich structured composites is increasing due to its higher compressive strength, damage tolerance and low moisture absorption compared to the open cell structured foams. Extensive microscopic examination of the syntactic foams tested under compressive and three-point bending conditions is undertaken in this study. The aim of the investigation is to determine the local fracture mode and correlate it with the microscopic structure of the material. Local stress states are identified in the material based on the microscopic fracture features. Syntactic foam tested in the study has resin to microballoons ratio of 1.52 by weight. Compression tests were conducted on the syntactic foam specimens having two different aspect rations, which were 0.4 and 0.91. Three-point bend tests were conducted on the sandwich structures containing syntactic foam as core material and glass fabric as the skin material.