Effect of Short Polypropylene Fibre Content on the Mechanical Properties of Textile-Reinforced Engineered Concrete Composite

The disadvantage of textile-reinforced concrete (TRC) composite was the sensibility with the cracking of the cementitious matrix. So, the addition of short fibres or powder in different natures to improve the ductility of concrete could be a solution to overcome this weakness. This can lead to an alternative material that has remarkable tensile properties and satisfies the current material requirements. Over the last decade, the textile-reinforced engineered cementitious composite (TRECC) material has been increasingly and widely applied in the civil engineering field. This paper presents experimental results at the mesoscale on the mechanical properties of ECC and glass TRECC materials in which the polypropylene fibres were added to the concrete matrix to improve the ductility of the composite. The experimental tests were performed on ECC and glass TRECC specimens according to the ASTM and European standards. As a result, the addition of polypropylene fibre enhanced the flexural tensile strength of ECC specimens (up to 20.52%), the bonding strength of the glass textile/ECC interface (up to 26.62%) as well as ultimate strength of glass TRECC (up to 11.29%). From that, the effect of short polypropylene fibre content in glass TRECC on its mechanical properties was highlighted and analyzed. With a highest content of PP fibre (0.6% by weight of cement), the improvement was 20.52% for flexural tensile strength of concrete, 11.29% for TRECC tensile strength and 26.62% for the bonding strength of the interface.