Experimental Study on Improved Engineered Cementitious Composite Using Local Material

Abstract

Engineered Cementitious Composite (ECC) is a cement based material with ultra-high ductility and strength in tension. This material is a kind of highperformance fiber-reinforced cementitious composite materials (HPFRCCs) reinforced with short fibers and characterized by tight multiple cracking. These characteristics of ECC make it applicable to increase the capacity and the ductility of structural elements so that structural design is economic and sustainable. This paper presents an extended evaluation of Improved Engineered Cementitious Composites (IECC) for the use in the strengthening of masonry in filled reinforced concrete frames. IECC is a mixture of cement, fly ash, water, sand, quartz powder and poly-vinyl alcohol fibers with a better quality of tensile strain rather than common ECC. Two types of fine sand and quartz powder used in this study as filler to improve ECC behavior. Also, to show the effect of fly ash on IECC properties, five different mixtures were considered with various fly ash ratios. Different mixtures of IECC using fine aggregates produced in Iran were selected to find out how the aggregates and fly ash would affect IECC performance. The results show that the optimized mixture has the best characteristics including tensile strength and strain. Also, three-dimensional diagrams were used to compare the properties of different mixtures of IECC more effectively and to represent the influence of the range of fly ash ratios so that it can be opted based on design objectives such as ECC properties, costs and structural parameters and demands. These diagrams show the behavior of IECC which its fly ash content ratio in the binder is 50% to 67%.