Fracture Energy, Fatigue and Creep Properties of Engineered Cementitious Composites Incorporating Fly Ash/Slag with Different Aggregates

Abstract

This thesis investigates the influence of microsilica sand and local crushed sand, and different supplementary cementing materials on the mechanical properties of engineered cementitious composites (ECCs). ECC is a special type of high performance fiber reinforced cementitious composite with high ductility which exhibits strain-hardening and multiple-cracking behaviours in tension. The use of local aggregates in ECC production can lower its cost to mitigate the obstacles of wider commercial use. The experimental results showed that multiple-cracking behaviour was developed under fatigue loading for fly ash ECC (FA-ECC) mixtures, and the number of cracks was lower at both lower fatigue stress level and higher fatigue number of cycles. FA-ECC mixtures with silica sand exhibited higher deflection evolution under fatigue loading than FA-ECC mixtures with crushed sand. Based on the experimental results on link slab specimens, both FA-ECC mixtures with silica and crushed sands exhibited almost the same creep behaviour.