Building with fibre-reinforced polymers

CSA (2002), Design and Construction of Building Components with Fibre-Reinforced Polymers, CAN/CSA S806-02, Rexdale, Ontario, Canadian Standards Association. 

From the first experiences with the application of fibre-reinforced polymers up to modern buildings... 

About 30% of all polymers produced each year are used in the civil engineering and building industries(23). Nevertheless, structural plastics such as fibre reinforced composites have so far received little attention by civil and structural engineers, despite some of their obvious advantages such as lightness, handleability and corrosion resistance. This may be due to reservations on credibility grounds or fire resistance properties, as well as to uncertainty on how to design structures with them. Whilst their mechanical properties are in fact fairly well understood, there are a number of... 

Blending, alloying and compounding are especially important in the production of materials to fulfil demanding specifications These involve the addition of various fillers and reinforcements, including glass fibre, in order to build in the desired properties. The production of polymers for the component sector is a specialised business with dedicated suppliers. 

PEEK and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) are highly incompatible. However, fine PTFE powder is commonly added to PAEK to act as an internal lubricant in tribiological applications. The PTFE smears across the wear surface and reduces interfacial friction. This reduces interfacial forces and the heat build-up that can lead to failure by melting. PTFE is particularly suitable in applications where there is no external lubricant and the compounds are often reinforced with carbon fibre. PEEK can also be added to PTFE to improve the wear properties of PTFE - although other less expensive polymers can have similar effects. More recently PAEK and PTFE have been blended so as to produce melt-processable PTFE which has a number of interesting properties [24]. This is perhaps the most luilikely example of the use of PAEK to improve the melt-processability of an otherwise hard-to-process material. 

---