The paper presents research program of bond between glass fiber reinforced polymer bars and concrete in reference to the steel bars. Bond between the reinforcement and concrete is a crucial parameter governing a behaviour of reinforced concrete members and transferring of the internal forces from concrete to the reinforcement. The use of FRP bars as an equivalent reinforcement to steel in concrete structures has increased in recent years. The FRP bars are very different from steel, mainly due to much lower elasticity modulus and their anisotropic structure. Good performance of FRP reinforced concrete requires sufficient interfacial bond between bars and concrete. However, there are no specific standards referring to the surface preparation of these bars, that leads to variable bond behaviour of the composite reinforcement to the concrete. The objective of the study was to investigate the influence of variable parameters on the bond behaviour to concrete. The experimental program consisted of eighteen beam bond specimens varying in: bar diameter (12 mm, 16 mm, 18 mm) and type of reinforcement (GFRP sand – coated and steel bars). Although the GFRP bars indicated good bond behaviour to concrete, the average bond strength was slightly lower than that of steel reinforcement of 16mm and 18 mm, while it was higher for the GFRP bars of 12 mm diameter.

The aim of the paper is to investigate the shear failure mechanisms in T-shape, single span and simply supported beams exclusively reinforced with longitudinal glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) bars. Usually the critical shear crack in RC beams without stirrups develops through the theoretical compression strut reducing the shear strength following the shear failure. The main parameter affecting the crack pattern and the shear strength of the beams is the shear slenderness. However, the test results presented in the paper indicated the new arching effect due to the bond losing between the GFRP flexural reinforcement and concrete. This failure mode revealed unexpected critical crack pattern and failure mode. The research of concrete beams flexurally reinforced with GFRP bars without stirrups indicated two failure modes: typical shear-compression and a new one leading by the bond losing between the ordinary reinforcement and concrete.

Fiber reinforced polymers (FRPs) due to their specific high-strength properties become more and more popular and replace traditional structural materials like conventional steel in prestressed concrete structures. FRP reinforced structures are relatively new when compared to structures prestressed with steel tendons. For that reason only several studies and applications of pre-tensioned FRP reinforcement have been conducted until now. Moreover, researchers only considered short-term behavior of FRP reinforced concrete members. The precise information about long-term behavior of FRP reinforcement is necessary to evaluate the prestress losses, which should be taken into account in the design of prestressed RC structures. One of the most important factor influencing long term behavior of FRP reinforcement is stress relaxation. The overview of experimental tests results described in the available literature considering the prestress losses obtained in FRP prestressed concrete members is presented herein.