FRP-coated steel rebars: a new solution of corrosion protection for concrete structures

Steel corrosion in infrastructure costs an economy around 3% of its GDP. Against this issue, a common practice is to use corrosion-resistant rebars in concrete structures, e.g., epoxy-coated steel rebars, stainless steel rebars, and fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) rebars. However, all these corrosion-resistant rebar technologies have certain limitations, and cannot meet the needs of the rapid development of marine infrastructure in the Great Bay Area. This webinar will introduce a PolyU innovation which is a new type of corrosion-resistant steel-based rebars that overcomes all these limitations. These novel rebars, referred to as FRP-coated steel rebars (FCSRs), consist of a steel rebar as the core component and a thin FRP coating formed using the filament winding technique. Experimental results and application experience over the past four years demonstrate that FCSRs have excellent corrosion resistance and bond performance with concrete. The FRP coating layer of FCSRs is highly resistant to accidental loadings during transportation and onsite handling. More importantly, FCSRs are highly cost-effective with a unit cost of about 1/4 that of stainless steel rebars. It is therefore expected that FCSRs will become a new solution of corrosion protection for concrete structures in marine and other corrosive environments.