ABSTRACT
The use of pultruded fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) composite materials in civil infrastructure have increased in the last two decades due to their lightweight, design flexibility, and non-corrosiveness. One of the issues that hinder the widespread of FRP materials is their complex failure mechanisms, which impede accurate prediction of the behavior of pultruded structures. Multicontinuum theory (MCT) was introduced as an efficient numerical approach that can provide accurate prediction of the behavior and failure of composites without expensive computations. MCT is developed from the traditional continuum theory to provide a method to discretely estimate the stresses and strains fields of different constituents (e.g. fiber and matrix) within the framework of finite element (FE) analysis. In this paper, MCT technique is employed to develop a numerical model to realize the failure mechanism of pultruded glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) composite frame structure modeled in ABAQUS®. This FE model was first validated using experimental results of pultruded GFRP frame available in the literature and was then used to investigate the seismic response of pultruded GFRP frame. Three earthquake signals with different peak ground accelerations (PGA) were applied to the model and the damage evolution of the pultruded frame was discussed. The simulation results highlight the efficiency of using MCT technique to carry out progressive failure analysis of pultruded composite infrastructure and identify various damage levels specifically during extreme loading events.
