Mechanical prestressing of annealed glass beams using pretensioned GFRP: characterisation and potentiality

This paper presents the results of an experimental investigation on the mechanical behaviour of annealed glass beams prestressed using adhesively-bonded pretensioned Glass Fibre Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) strips. The results show that the glass beams prestressed using pretensioned GFRP showed an increased load capacity compared to equivalent glass beams reinforced with unprestressed GFRPs. The prestressed glass beams showed a notable ductile post-cracked behaviour similar to annealed glass beams reinforced with unprestressed GFRP strips. The results also show that the proposed glass prestressing technique prevented premature debonding of the GFRP strips from the glass beams and explosive final failure of the glass beams, unlike in the mechanically-prestressed glass beams investigated in the literature where these failures were commonly observed.