MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF A PVA FIBER REINFORCED ENGINEERED CEMENTITIOUS COMPOSITE

High Performance Fiber Reinforced Cementitious Composites (HPFRCCs) are promising construction materials characterized by tensile strain hardening behavior. Engineered Cementitious Composite (ECC) is a special type of HPFRCC developed with enhanced ductility and durability. Coarse aggregates are usually excluded from the ECC matrix, and the reported ECCs are typically produced with microsilica sand having a maximum grain size of 200 พm. In this paper, a PVA-ECC mixture containing local dune sand with a maximum grain size of 300 พm was developed, and its compressive and tensile properties were experimentally investigated. A dog-bone-shaped specimen and a rectangular-coupon-shaped specimen were both used in the tensile test, and it was found after extensive research that the dog-bone specimen was more suitable than the rectangular coupon specimen. The experimental results from the dog-bone specimens indicated that the newly-developed composite possessed good tensile strain-hardening behavior, with a high ultimate tensile strength, and the compressive strength was comparable to that of existing PVA-ECCs.