Past projects

Fibre composite pile replacement/rehabilitation system - Proof of concept

Prof Thiru Aravinthan
Dr Mainul Islam

Fibre composite technology is one of the sutainable alternative material. In the marine environment in particular, fibre composite materials can be selected for their corrosion, rot, and pest resistance, as well as high strength-to-weight. This project aims to develop a system for pile replacement for piers, jetties and boardwalks using fibre composite technology to enable replacement of piles for rehabilitation of these structures. Given the significant number of timber-piled piers in particular along the Queensland and remainder of the Australian coastline, the commercial potential for the development of a cost-effective fibre composite system that has an expected life of 50-100 years is enormous. This system will enable piles to be repaired or replaced with long-life fibre composite piles. Thus, the Brisbane City Council has contracted Buchanan Advanced Composites Pty Ltd to design and supply fibre composite pile replacement/rehabilitation system and the University of Southern Queensland for research and development for the development of this new innovation under the Queensland government – Smart Futures Fund.
Project partners:
Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation, QLD
Buchanan Advanced Composites Pty Ltd

Fibre composite railway sleepers

Prof Thiru Aravinthan
Assoc Prof Karu Karunasena
Dr Allan Manalo

Sandwich panels consist of core and skins. The project aims to investigate flexural behaviour of fibre composite sandwich panels with different cores and skin fibre orientations. The scope is limited to preparing sandwiches, conducting one and two-way spanning flexural tests and an analysis. It is important to investigate this behaviour because different fibre orientations show anisotropic behaviour in different directions with different aspect ratio of sandwiches. The outcome will provide a better understanding of the behaviour for different directional applications to develop a suitable design methodology.
Project funding:
University of Southern Queensland

Prof Gerard Van Erp

Dr Tim Heldt

In late 2002, the Roads and Traffic Authority of NSW (RTA) approached CEEFC for assistance with a structural problem that is affecting a number of its bridges. These bridges were relatively new bridges that were constructed using concrete piles that suffered from a serious decay mechanism known as Alkali Aggregate Reaction (AAR). This mechanism caused expansive forces within the piles which eventually led to large cracks at the pile surface. These cracks resulted in serious corrosion of the reinforcement, in particular in submersed piles. This mechanism was significantly well understood to be largely prevented in new structures, but many existing bridge structures required major rehabilitation. Later the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads also became actively involved in this project as they have a number of bridges with similar problems. The CEEFC team developed a fibre composite pile wrap concept that can be applied to submersed piles. The team constructed a number of prototype pile wraps and a series of underwater trials were conducted to test the effectiveness of the concept. A special pressure test was also carried out to establish that the concept could sustain the required high pressure loads. These tests have shown that the wrap exceeds the stringent requirements. Large scale production techniques are currently being developed in collaboration with a private company at the Gold Coast and installation of the first 100 fibre composite casings at the Missingham Bridge in Northern NSW is planned for the second half of 2004.
Project partners:
CEEFC, USQ
Roads and Traffic Authority NSW
Department of Transport and Main Roads, QLD

Prof Gerard Van Erp

Dr Tim Heldt
Prof Gerard Van Erp
Prof Thiru Aravinthan

Prof Gerard Van Erp
Dr Tim Heldt

Prof Thiru Aravinthan
Dr Tarek Omar

Mr Darren Browne

In recent times CEEFC has developed an interesting new material to create architectural products. This new composite material is aesthetically pleasing, largely maintenance free, resistant to moisture, weathering, insects and rot and has a life expectancy of more than 50 years. The material can be used for both small and large scale components. The use of this material for small scale structures opens up a range of new and exciting possibilities for bench slats, bar tops, the replacement of hardwood decking, etc.Towards the end of 2003 this new material was used to produce a number of trial bench slats for the BCC river walk project and to fit out a night club in Lismore (NSW). The same technology has been used to create early prototypes for fibre composite power poles and board walks. This technology is currently being transferred into commercial products in close collaboration with a number of industry partners.
Project funding:
CEEFC, USQ internal project

Dr Francisco Cardona

In Queensland there are 132 race track facilities. Some of these facilities have multiple tracks and some only one track which is made of either turf or sand. These tracks are used for both training and racing of thoroughbred race horses and require substantial amounts of water for them to be safe for use. This maintenance is a daily requirement with some sites using as much as 2 mega litres of water a week. Synthetic tracks require no watering for their maintenance offering substantial water efficiency throughout Queensland. In order to minimize or completely eliminate the need for the use of water in the ‘Velvet' and similar horse training tracks across Queensland, the CEEFC proposes a replacement of the sand track with a synthetic track material, which does not require the consumption  of water for its services and maintenance. Importantly, the track will perform similarly if not more superior having due regard for water conservation, animal welfare and rider welfare.
Project partner:
Queensland Racing Pty Ltd

Phenolic resin based polymer concrete formulations 

Dr David Rogers

Resole-based phenol-formaldehyde (phenolic) resins are typically used in composites applications where excellent fire and high temperature resistance is necessary. In 2004, some exciting development work involving the use of phenolic resins in light weight polymer concrete formulations was conducted. Some interesting technical aspects of the use of phenolic resins in these products were found, including improved strain to failure in highly filled formulations. This important finding has major implications, since strain to failure is normally the factor that most limits the use of polymer concrete formulations. The CEEFC has already identified commercial partners who have shown significant interest in these new phenolic based polymer concrete formulations.
Project funding:
CEEFC, USQ internal project

Dr Francisco Cardona

In 2005, Brisbane City Council (BCC) encountered difficulties during maintenance work on the New farm Floating Walkway structure. As part of on-going repairs to the concrete pontoons, they required a material that could simultaneously: bond well to concrete; cure quickly at room temperature; be unaffected by moist or wet environments; be readily mixable on-site; have very high flexural elongation and low flexural modulus whilst still maintaining considerable compression capacity. This combination of requirements presented a major challenge to most commercially available materials. In fact, no major resin supplier was prepared to supply any guarantee that their materials could achieve all of these requirements. BCC approached CEEFC with the request if it was possible to develop this kind of product. CEEFC took up the challenge to develop a new type of material that could achieve all these requirements. Early work using polyurethane resins and combinations of polyurethane and epoxy resins was only partially successful. It soon became apparent that only an epoxy system would be suitable.  However, nearly all epoxy resin systems available were much too rigid and brittle to achieve the high elongation requirements of BCC. After a lengthy series of trials, CEEFC was able to reduce the inherent brittleness of the epoxies through the use of toughening additives to both the resin and hardener components of the system. One of the most attractive toughening additives trialled was based on an epoxidised linseed oil developed in CEEFC's Plant Resin Project. In the end, it was only the commercial unavailability of sufficient quantities of this material that prevented it from being chosen in the final formulation.  Eventually, an equivalent rubber toughened product was chosen along with a commercial high elongation amine curing agent. Prior to use by BCC, substantial modelling and testing work was conducted, including full-scale tests of the adhesion characteristics of the material when bonding polymer concrete walers to concrete.
Project partner:
Brisbane City Council

Dr Francisco Cardona

This project has supported the Queensland Government's priority of diversifying and strengthening rural and regional economies through productivity and growth of alternative non-food oilseeds for the production of composite resins. This has been achieved by delivering the following outputs:

• identifying suitable species for oil extraction. (To be delivered by USQ, LOC Composites Pty Ltd, DEEDI, and EPA.)
• matching species to environment. (To be delivered by DEEDI, and EPA.)
• assessing the quality of the oils for resin production. (To be delivered by USQ, and LOC Composites Pty.)
• developing an initial cost benefit analysis for the use of non-food oils for resin production. (To be delivered by I&BI.)
  

Previous research work undertaken in the last couple of years in the Labs of the CEEFC demonstrated that epoxidised plant oils can be blended at up to 20-30% into conventional epoxy resins without a significant loss of mechanical properties.  The next stage of this work has concentrated on increasing the percentage of vegetable oil based products able to be successfully blended into conventional resins.  It has been shown that these epoxidised oils can be converted to toughening additives able to be incorporated into conventional epoxy resins or epoxy based adhesives.  Mechanical and thermal testing has shown that these epoxidised oil based additives offer comparable toughening performance to the widely-used toughening additives, at a much reduced overall cost.
Project partners:
Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation (DEEDI)
LOC Composites