Relating tensile properties with flexural properties in SHCC

Strain hardening cementitious composites (SHCCs) have seen increasing field applications in past decade, yet existing quality control test methods for tensile properties are sometime difficult to implement. This paper presents a new simple inverse method for quality control of tensile strain capacity by conducting beam flexural test. It is shown through a theoretical model that the beam deflection from a flexural test can be linearly related to tensile strain capacity. A master curve relating this easily measured structural element property to material tensile strain capacity is constructed from parametric studies of a wide range of material tensile and compressive properties. This proposed method (UM method) has been validated with uniaxial ten- sile test results with reasonable agreement. Good agreement between prediction and tensile test suggest that this method is very robust for different mixtures with variable geometry and test setup. 1 INSTRUCTION Ostergaard et al. (2005) have proposed an inverse analysis technique for FPBT. In their method, hinge SHCCs, also referred to as high performance fiber model, including both tensile strain hardening and reinforced cementitious composites (HPFRCCs et al. tension softening effect, was employed along with 1996), develop multiple cracks under tensile load in least square method to invert for tensile material contrast to single crack and tension softening behav- properties from their bending response. The model ior of concrete and conventional fiber reinforced can predict experimental load – deflection curve concrete. In the last 15 years, SHCCs have gained a fairly well and tensile properties derived based on this lot of attentions in infrastructural applications to method agree well with that from FEM analysis, yet overcome the brittle nature of concrete. SHCCs are no direct comparison with UTT results has been considered a promising material solution to the made so far.