Case Study: Design, Construction, and Performance of the La Chancelière Parking Garage’s Concrete Flat Slabs Reinforced with GFRP Bars
Publication: Journal of Composites for Construction
Volume 21, Issue 1
Abstract
Parking garages are among the concrete structures that suffer from corrosion and deterioration due to exposure to deicing salts. The 40-year-old La Chancelière parking garage in Québec (Canada) showed severe corrosion-related deterioration and was in need of costly rehabilitation. As its structural system consisted of two-way flat slabs and the steel reinforcement was severely corroded in most of the slabs, the City of Québec (structure’s owner) decided to replace the structure’s flat slabs (a total area of about ) with new ones, while maintaining the main supporting elements (columns and retaining walls). The consulting firm produced two designs with steel reinforcing bars and glass-fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) reinforcing bars. Based on the comparative cost analysis of the steel-reinforced and GFRP-reinforced designs, the city opted for GFRP bars. The flat-slab system was designed according to CAN/CSA S806-12 with GFRP bars as main reinforcement, the world’s first application of its type. The slabs were instrumented at critical locations to measure strain with fiber-optic sensors (FOSs) attached to the surface of the GFRP bars or embedded in concrete. This study provides details on the design, construction, and performance of GFRP-reinforced-concrete (GFRP-RC) flat slabs under real service loads and conditions over 3.5 years. In addition, it provides a comparative cost analysis of the steel-RC and GFRP-RC designs. The cost comparison confirms that the initial higher cost of GFRP compared to steel does not necessarily lead to a higher total cost and that a cost-effective design could be achieved.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank and express their sincere appreciation to the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC); the Canada Research Chair in Advanced Composite Materials for Civil Structures; and the NSERC/Industry Research Chair in Innovative FRP Reinforcement for Concrete Infrastructure in the Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Sherbrooke (Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada); the Fonds de recherche québécois en nature et technologies (FRQ-NT), and the City of Québec (parking-garage owner). The authors are also grateful to EMS Structure Inc. (consulting firm in Québec, Quebec, Canada), the general contractor Construction Paveton Inc., (Québec, Quebec, Canada); the GFRP reinforcement installer Les Ferrailleurs du Québec (Saint-Augustin-de-Desmaures, Quebec, Canada); and the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Sherbrooke, for their technical support.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Composites for Construction
Volume 21 • Issue 1 • February 2017
Copyright
© 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Apr 22, 2015
Accepted: Oct 20, 2015
Published online: Mar 9, 2016
Discussion open until: Aug 9, 2016
Published in print: Feb 1, 2017
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