Current Investigations and Field Performances of Engineered Cementitious Composites (ECC) in Transportation Infrastructure

1. Introduction

Concrete pavements are generally subjected to heavy loads compared to flexible pavements due to their load-bearing capacity and less maintenance during service life. However, many concrete pavements and infrastructures have deteriorated due to the matrix's brittle behavior and cracking potential J.Zhang et al. (2013). Significant research is going on to improve the ductility of the concrete matrix. One of the efficient solutions is to incorporate the fibers in the matrix, called Fiber Reinforced Concrete (FRC) V. C.Li et al. (2001). Incorporating the fibers increased the toughness of the concrete matrix by resisting the propagation of cracks into major fractures due to the fiber bridging phenomenon V. C.Li et al. (2001), (2002). However, this modification in the matrix had a minimal impact on increasing ductility. FRC exhibits tension Softening (i.e., localization of failure mechanism due to fiber breakage, matrix cracking, or delamination) behavior under the tensile load after the first crack. It is advantageous in FRC in gradually losing strength and limiting the crack width due to the fiber bridging phenomenon, making FRC a quasi-brittle material. However, adding fiber increased the fracture toughness of concrete, but tensile strain capacity remains unchanged (or a slight improvement).

The current chapter reviewed the characteristics of FRC, the development of ECC, and field case studies of ECC in the context of transportation infrastructure. Figure 1 provides a detailed conceptual framework illustrating the structure and content of this chapter.

Figure 1.

Methodological framework of the review chapter

Few researchers suggested the behavior of FRC materials based on their tensile and bending characteristics during crack propagation D. jooKim et al. (2008); Naaman & Reinhardt (2006). According to the model developed by Naaman & Reinhardt (2006), after achieving the proportionality limit (point 1 in Figure 2), the tensile behavior of the particular material can be divided into either tensile strain hardening (curve (a) in Figure 2) or tensile strain softening (curve (b) in Figure 2). Similarly, the flexural behavior of FRC can also be classified as deflection softening (curve (a) in Figure 3) or deflection hardening (curve (b) in Figure 3). Also, it is important to mention that deflection hardening can occur in both tension strain softening and hardening FRCs. The FRCs showing strain-hardening behavior in tensile loading are High-Performance Fiber Reinforced Cementitious Composites (HPFRCC).

Figure 2.

Tensile stress-strain response of material in a) strain-hardening, b) strain-softening (Naaman & Reinhardt, 2006)

Figure 3.

Load-deflection response of FRCC in bending (D. Joo Kim et al., 2008)

Figure 4.

Performance levels of FRC (Wille et al., 2014)