Pre-stress losses in FRP pre-stressed reinforced concrete – subject overview

This paper discuss the issue of pre-stress losses which occur in the FRP prestressed concrete structures. The prestress losses consist of immediate losses just after pre-tensioning of the FRP composite and time-dependent losses. Prestress losses are affected by different factors as strength properties of used materials, ambient temperature, humidity, UV radiation, bond between the FRP material and RC specimen, type of anchorage and creep of prestressing system. Two types of tests can be found in the available literature: material samples subjected to sustained uniaxial tension which verify the relaxation of FRP tendons (Wang et al., Sasaki and Nishizaki, Shi et al and Oskouei and Taleie) and flexural tests of RC beams strengthened with pre-tensioned FRPs (Wang et al.). Authors considered different types of composites: carbon (Wang et al, Sasaki and Nishizaki, Oskouei and Taleie), aramid (Sasaki and Nishizaki, Oskouei and Taleie), glass (Sasaki and Nishizaki), vinyl (Sasaki and Nishizaki) and basalt (Shi et al.).