Tensile Experiments and Numerical Analysis of Textile-Reinforced Lightweight Engineered Cementitious Composites

Despite many cases of textile-reinforced engineered cementitious composites (TR-ECCs) for repairing and strengthening concrete structures in the literature, research on lightweight engineered cementitious composites (LECC) combined with large rupture strain (LRS) textile and the effect of textile arrangement on tensile properties is still lacking. Therefore, this paper develops textile-reinforced lightweight engineered cementitious composites (TR-LECCs) with high strain characteristics through reinforcement ratio, arrangement form, and textile type. The study revealed that, by combining an LRS polypropylene (PP) textile and LECC, TR-LECCs with an ultimate strain of more than 8.0% (3-4 times that of traditional TR-ECCs) could be developed, and the PP textile's utilization rate seemed insensitive to the enhancement rate. The basalt fiber-reinforced polymer (BFRP) textile without epoxy resin coating had no noticeable reinforcement effect because of bond slip; in contrast, the BFRP grid with epoxy resin coating had an apparent improvement in bond performance with the matrix and a better reinforcement effect. The finite element method (FEM) verified that a concentrated arrangement increased the stress concentration in the TR-LECC, as well as the stress value. In contrast, a multilayer arrangement enabled uniform distribution of the stress value and revealed that the weft yarn could help the warp yarn to bear additional tensile loads.