Compressive resistance of thin-walled pultruded GFRP profiles: The role of delamination examined through experiments and FE simulations

Abstract

Significant efforts have been made in the last decades to develop design rules and guidelines for composite structures, meeting the increasing interest in pultruded glass fibre reinforced profiles (GFRP) by the construction industry. One aspect that has been difficult to address is the crushing resistance of these profiles, with previous research indicating that the design equations are not conservative, predicting much higher resistances than those obtained in experimental tests. This paper explores the possibility that crushing resistance is governed by tensile failure in the through-thickness direction of the laminates, by Poisson effect, and proposes modifications to a previously presented material damage model to account for this in finite element (FE) simulations. Compressive experimental tests were conducted in stub-column specimens, with 5 different open-section configurations, obtained from three different producers. The test results were compared to analytical and FE simulations, confirming that the former grossly overestimate the resistance, while the latter, with the proposed damage model, compare well with experimental results.