Corrosion of steel reinforcement remains one of the most significant durability challenges in reinforced concrete infrastructure, particularly in regions where road salt exposure accelerates deterioration. This research investigates the feasibility of a sustainable, salt-resistant alternative to conventional steel rebar through the development of pultruded composite rods composed of hemp and flax bast fibers embedded in a recycled thermoplastic polymer matrix.
Pultrusion parameters that included volume fraction, rate of pultrusion, and die temperature were evaluated in a design set of experiments using short beam shear samples. The results of these tests were used to identify the optimal set of parameters that were then used to create pultruded tensile samples to evaluate and characterize the performance of the pultruded rods. Additionally, microscopy samples were taken from the pultruded rods before and after tensile evaluation to determine the quality of matrix infusion into the fiber.
Acknowledgements: I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the Lee Davenport Summer Research Fellowship for supporting this research during the past summer. This funding enabled six weeks of intensive experimental testing and allowed the project to continue developing into the academic year. The work conducted through this fellowship has also laid the foundation for multiple forthcoming publications in collaboration with Professor Walczyk and graduate students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, whose composite center manufactured the pultruded composite samples used in this study.
I am especially grateful to Professor Ron Bucinell for his mentorship and guidance throughout this project. His mentorship has been one of the highlights of my engineering career, consistently challenging me to think critically and approach problems independently and creatively.