Textile Reinforced Concrete: experimental investigation on design parameters

Abstract

Textile Reinforced Concrete (TRC) is an advanced cement-based material in which fabrics used as reinforcement can bring significant loads in tension, allowing architects and engineers to use thin cross-sections. Previous research projects, developed during the last 10 years mainly in Germany, Israel and the USA, have shown the capabilities of such a material. In this paper an extensive experimental investigation of TRC is presented: tensile tests were carried out to obtain a complete mechanical characterization of the composite material under standard conditions, considering the influence of different variables such as reinforcement ratio, fabric geometry, curing conditions, displacement rate and specimen size

Tensile behaviour of mortar-based composites for externally bonded reinforcement systems

“…While gluing the tabs, particular attention was paid in aligning their holes to the specimen axis, in order to avoid bending. The spherical articulation minimizes parasitic bending moments, as recommended by the Annex A of the US standard AC434 [19] and already tested for TRC specimens in [22,23]. With this clamping method, the textile slid within the matrix (Fig.…”

“…Numerous experimental studies have been carried out in the last decade on the tensile response of TRC [21,22], also including effects of testing procedures and setup detailing [23,24]. However, TRC matrices usually consist of high performance cement concrete, which may be suitable for the strengthening of reinforced concrete members, while application to masonry usually involves weaker lime mortars.…”

Thin‐walled shell structures made of textile‐reinforced concrete

“…Whereas the design of the bending test setup is relatively simple, the design of the tensile test setup represents a non-trivial problem. A variety of setups have been presented in recent years [3,8,9]; an overview and classification is provided in [7].…”

“…In order to explain the concept, let us briefly review the strain-hardening behaviour of the brittle matrix composite depicted in Figs. 2b and 2c with three distinct stages [7,8,14,15]: I) uncracked stage, IIa) distributed cracking of the concrete matrix and IIb) post-cracking stage with a saturated crack pattern. The composite stresses shown in Fig.…”

“…Therefore, the cross-sectional strength characteristics of TRC have to be determined experimentally for each material combination considered. For this purpose, several types of test setup have been developed recently [3,7,8,9].…”