Florida DOT - GFRP Rebar workshop

This past Wednesday June 15th, it was a privilege to participate in a historic FRP industry event, Florida DOT's GFRP rebar workshop held in conjunction with the FDOT 2016 Design Training Expo in Daytona Beach FL.  
Leaders of FDOT design and engineering staff asked for the GFRP rebar industry as a whole to gather and learn FDOT's perspective on safe deployment of GFRP reinforcement for concrete structures, barriers they see for expanded GFRP implementation and areas FDOT would focus on for implementation. 
Present at the GFRP rebar workshop were 45 individuals representing five GFRP rebar producers, raw material suppliers from Owens Corning glass fibers, resin producers, academic experts from several universities and from many different departments within FDOT.
Presentations given at the summit and the overall agenda can be seen at the following link:

http://www.dot.state.fl.us/structures/GFRPRebarWorkshop/

"The conversation"

Read a wonderful article which appeared to me as a link in Bill Palmers Concrete Construction e-news letter today.   The article is written by Guy Keulemans

Associate lecturer, UNSW Australia who has made an excellent summary of the fact that concrete is a vibrant active material and that hidden steel rebar is a "secretly active" degradation mechanism.   

He writes; "Steel is often perceived to be inert and resilient too. Terms such as “Iron Age” suggest an ancient durability, although Iron Age artefacts are comparatively rare precisely because they rust. If construction steel is visible, it can be maintained – for instance, when the Sydney Harbour Bridge is repeatedly painted and repainted.

However, when embedded in concrete, steel is hidden but secretly active. Moisture entering through thousands of tiny cracks creates an electrochemical reaction. One end of the rebar becomes an anode and the other a cathode, forming a “battery” that powers the transformation of iron into rust. Rust can expand the rebar up to four times its size, enlarging cracks and forcing the concrete to fracture apart in a process called spalling, more widely known as “concrete cancer”. "

Read the full article here:

https://theconversation.com/the-problem-with-reinforced-concrete-56078