Within the EC funded project smart elements for sustainable building envelopes, carbon textile reinforcement was incorporated into reactive powder concrete, namely textile reinforced reactive powder concrete (TRRPC), to additionally improve the post-cracking behaviour of the cementitious matrix. This high-performance composite material was included as outer and inner façade panels in prefabricated and non-load bearing sandwich elements along with low density foamed concrete (FC) and glass fibre reinforced polymer continuous connecting devices. Experiments and finite element analysis (FEA) were applied to characterize the structural performance of the developed sandwich elements. The mechanical behaviour of the individual materials, components and large-scale elements were quantified. Four-point bending tests were performed on large-scale TRRPC-FC sandwich element beams to quantify the flexural capacity, level of composite action, resulting deformation, crack propagation and failure mechanisms. Optical measurements based on digital image correlation were taken simultaneously to enable a detailed analysis of the underlying composite action. The structural behaviour of the developed elements was found to be highly dependent on the stiffness and strength of the connectors to ensure composite action between the two TRRPC panels. As for the FEA, the applied modelling approach was found to accurately describe the stiffness of the sandwich elements at lower load levels, while describing the stiffness in a conservative manner after the occurrence of connector failure mechanisms.

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Textile Reinforced Concrete (TRC) has emerged as a promising alternative wherein corrosion is no longer an issue and much thinner and lightweight elements can be designed. Although TRC has been expansively researched, the formalization of experimental methods concerning durability arises when attempting to implement and design such innovative building materials. In this study, accelerated ageing tests paired with tensile tests were performed. The change in physico-mechanical properties of various commercially available textile reinforcements was documented and evaluated. The ability for the reinforcements to retain their tensile capacity was also quantified in the form of empirical degradation curves. It was observed that accelerated test parameters typically applied to fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) bars and grids are generally too aggressive for the textile reinforcement products and alternative boundary conditions are necessary. The developed degradation curves were found to have an overall good correlation with the experimental findings.

Textile Reinforced Concrete (TRC) has emerged as a promising novel alternative offering corrosion resistance and both thinner and light-weight structures. Although TRC has been extensively researched, the formalization of experimental methods and design standards is still in progress. The aim of this work was to extract local-bond behaviour from pull-out tests of basalt and carbon TRC and utilize these in both simple (1D) and advanced models (3D) to yield the global structural behaviour. The simulation results from the 1D and 3D models are able to simulate the complex behaviour of TRC with a reasonable level of correlation. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version