Rheology, fiber dispersion, and robust properties of Engineered Cementitious Composites

By Mo Li, Victor C. Li. 2013

301 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The capability of processing robust Engineered Cementitious Composites (ECC) materials with consistent mechanical properties is crucial for gaining acceptance of this new construction material in various structural applications. ECC’s tensile strain-hardening behavior and magnitude of tensile strain capacity are closely associated with fiber dispersion uniformity, which determines the fiber bridging strength, complementary energy, critical flaw size and degree of multiple-crack saturation. This study investigates the correlation between the rheological parameters of ECC mortar before adding PVA fibers, dispersion of PVA fibers, and ECC composite tensile properties. The correlation between Marsh cone flow rate and plastic viscosity was established for ECC mortar, justifying the use of the Marsh cone as a simple rheology measurement and control method before fibers are added. An optimal range of Marsh cone flow rate was found that led to improved fiber dispersion uniformity and more consistent tensile strain capacity in the composite. When coupled with the micromechanics based ingredient-tailoring methodology, this rheological control approach serves as an effective ECC fresh property design guide for achieving robust ECC composite hardening properties.

Subfields: Building and Construction, Civil and Structural Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/24f598decc0a6f1e19a5b2114d501e1a43aacf84

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Citations in the corpus

The role of flaw size and fiber distribution on tensile ductility of PVA-ECC (2014, methodology): “Li and Li [5] studied the relationships between matrix rheology, fiber dispersion uniformity and composite strain capacity.”
Development of green engineered cementitious composites using iron ore tailings as aggregates (2013, background): “The geometry of a Marsh cone is given in Li and Li [6].”
Advances in characterizing and understanding the microstructure of cementitious materials (2019, background): “…successes obtained through micro-mechanics-facilitated design of concrete, including strain-hardening and bendable cementitious composites [22,23], researchers are ded-icating a tremendous effort to develop new concepts of nanomechanics to increase the strength density beyond that of…”