polymers Article Transient Thermal Tensile Behaviour of Novel Pitch-Based Ultra-High Modulus CFRP Tendons Giovanni Pietro Terrasi 1,2,*, Emma R. E. McIntyre 2, Luke A. Bisby 2, Tobias D. Lämmlein 1 and Pietro Lura 3,4 1 Mechanical Systems Engineering Laboratory, Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Überlandstrasse 129, CH-8600 Dübendorf, Switzerland;
[email protected] 2 BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering, Institute for Infrastructure & Environment, School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh, The King’s Buildings Edinburgh, EH93JL Scotland, UK;
[email protected] (E.R.E.M.);
[email protected] (L.A.B.) 3 Concrete and Construction Chemistry Laboratory, Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Überlandstrasse 129, CH-8600 Dübendorf, Switzerland;
[email protected] 4 Institute for Building Materials (IfB), ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +41-587-654-117; Fax: +41-587-656-911 Academic Editors: Alper Ilki and Masoud Motavalli Received: 24 October 2016; Accepted: 6 December 2016; Published: 21 December 2016 Abstract: A novel ultra-high modulus carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) prestressing tendon made from coal tar pitch-based carbon fibres was characterized in terms of high temperature tensile strength (up to 570 ◦C) with a series of transient thermal and steady state temperature tensile tests. Digital image correlation was used to capture the high temperature strain development during thermal and mechanical loading. Complementary thermogravimetric (TGA) and dynamic mechanical thermal (DMTA) experiments were performed on the tendons to elucidate their high temperature thermal and mechanical behaviour.