Long-Term Performance of Seawater Sea-sand Concrete (SSC) Columns Wrapped with CFRP Strips under Simulated Marine Environment

Abstract

This article presents a durability study of carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) partially wrapped seawater sea-sand concrete (SSC) columns exposed to natural seawater to explore the effect of exposure duration on the long-term performance of the specimens. Thirty-two cylinders were wrapped with CFRP jackets and exposed to different times of wet-dry cycles (up to 360 days) in an outdoor simulated marine environment. Test results indicate that exposure has no obvious influence on the failure process and ultimate strains of specimens, but the compressive strengths of confined columns (fcc) increase with the increment of exposure time, especially for the partially confined concrete specimens. Moreover, due to the significant variation of unconfined concrete strength (fco*), the retentions of fcc and fcc/fco* exhibit an opposite trend. Therefore, the increase of fco* should be considered when using the parameter of the confined-to-unconfined ratio of strength to evaluate the long-term performance of the specimens.