Zero corrosion precast HPC sheet-piles prestressed with GFRP bars

Since decades, the prestressed reinforced concrete technique, with steel strands, has been widely used in structural and infrastructural fields. The paper deals with the possibility to replace the traditional steel strands with new composite Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) bars for the prestressing of precast High-Performance Concrete (HPC) sheet-piles. The use of prestressing combined with non-corrosive rebars could be a good solution in all those cases where the attention of the design is focused on durability, structural lightness, sustainability and economic advantages due to the reduction of the structure maintenance costs. In order to evaluate the feasibility of the proposed solution, suitable design and check were carried out, supported by full-scale experimental test. Finally, to confirm the potentiality of the new prototype, the long-term behaviour of the sheet-pile was also investigated by carrying out a further bending test on a prototype aged more than 3 years.