Effect of Combining Fiber and Textile Reinforcement on the Flexural Behavior of UHPC Plates

Abstract

A series of flexural tests were performed in order to investigate the effect of steel fiber reinforcement (SFR) in textile-reinforced concrete (TRC) plates. Some of the specimens were reinforced only with textile, some of them only with fibers, and some of them were provided with both textile and fiber reinforcement. The concrete matrix was a self-developed ultrahigh performance concrete (UHPC) mixture with a compression strength over 160 MPa. The tensile strength of the used textiles was around 1500 MPa for glass fiber textile and over 3000 MPa for carbon fiber textile. In case of fiber reinforcement, the concrete was reinforced with 2 vol% of 15 mm long and 0.2 mm diameter plain high strength steel fibers. The dimensions of the rectangular plate test specimens were 700 × 150 × 30 mm. The plate specimens were tested in a symmetric four-point bending setup with a universal testing machine. The tests were monitored using a photogrammetric measurement system with digital image correlation (DIC). The paper presents and evaluates the test results, analyses the crack patterns and crack development, and compares the failure modes. The results showed a general advantageous mechanical behavior of specimens reinforced with the combination of fibers and textiles in comparison to the specimens reinforced with only fiber or textile reinforcement.