Flexural Properties of Textile-Reinforced Concrete with Nonorthogonal Grids

Textile-reinforced concrete (TRC) is a cement-based composite material that uses textile as a reinforcement material. The weft-direction fiber bundles in the traditional orthogonally arranged warp-weft textile hardly bear force, and its bonding strength with the weft fiber bundle is not ideal. Under the action of force, a small included angle between the stressed fiber bundle and the stressed direction can effectively increase the anchoring effect of their fibers in the matrix, resulting in higher bonding and reinforcement efficiency. To improve the utilization rate of fibers and the bonding strength between the textile and the concrete matrix, an arrangement along the diagonal of the grids was proposed in this paper. The flexural properties of basalt TRC plates with orthogonal grids (OG-BTRC) and plates with nonorthogonal grids (NOG-BTRC) with different grid angles and grid sizes with different laying methods, namely, a side layout (SL) and diagonal layout (DL), were studied through four-point bending tests. A comparative analysis was carried out with an ABAQUS simulation and the test results. The results showed that with a decrease in the grid angle, the BTRC specimens gradually showed a failure mode of multiple cracks, and most of the cracks appeared in the pure bending area; as the grid angle decreased, the BTRC specimens exhibited excellent flexural bearing capacity, good ductility, and high toughness. The total number of cracks on the specimen increased when it failed, while the spacing of the cracks decreased, and the fracture morphology appeared as fine and uniform features. The toughness of the specimen with a small grid angle using the DL laying method was greater than that using the SL laying method. The software simulation value matched the test data well, which proved that the test result was reliable.