The rusty iron rebars that protrude from the corroded concrete of bridges, parking garages and other structures is not only an eyesore and costly to repair, but a major safety concern for a great deal of Canada’s concrete infrastructure.
An invention by a team led by Khaled Soudki, a University of Waterloo civil and environmental engineering professor and Canada Research Chair in Innovative Structural Rehabilitation, now makes it possible to build pre-stressed concrete structures using carbon-fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) tendons, which are lighter, non-corrosive and stronger compared to traditional iron rebar. A new anchoring system, FiberLoc™, developed by Khaled Soudki, Alan Plumtree and Adil Al-Mayah will enable the use of lighter, stronger concrete structures that require less maintenance saving taxpayers millions.
Using CFRP tendons in concrete structures isn’t a new concept but it hasn’t been widely used in the important pre-stressed concrete applications due to the lack of an effective gripping anchor system. FiberLoc™, the Waterloo research team’s new anchoring system, is a locking device that allows tensioning of the CFRP tendons to its full strength potential thus enabling many more CFRP construction applications.
Working in partnership with WatCo, Soudki secured $125,000 in funding from the NSERC Idea to Innovation (I2I) program to develop and test pre-commercial prototypes that ultimately were used in several research bridge construction projects. Eventually news of these successful FiberLoc™ bridge applications made its way to the Ontario Ministry of Transport (MTO) who specified its use to pre-cast concrete producers to fabricate members for a series of bridges under construction in Northern Ontario and elsewhere in Canada. Pultrall Inc., a Quebec manufacturer of CFRP bars and supplier to some of the Northern Ontario bridge projects quickly recognized the market opportunity to combine their proprietary CFRP product, V-ROD™, with the enabling FiberLoc™ anchor and began working with Soudki to implement some design changes to marry the two technologies together. WatCo worked closely with Soudki and Pultrall during the bridge projects which culminated in Pultrall securing an exclusive licence for the technology and more importantly a significant competitive advantage in the CFRP construction market. Pultrall and Soudki’s team plan to embark on future collaborative research projects to develop FiberLoc™ accessory products and new anchoring systems for other applications across North America.
FiberLoc™ will significantly spur the adoption and benefits of CFRP use in worldwide bridge and other concrete structure applications. “WatCo’s long term commitment and assistance to advancing FiberLoc™ through patenting, prototyping, and licensing were absolutely essential to move our research breakthrough from the laboratory to an actual product being used in the construction market,” says Soudki as he reflects on the commercializaton journey.