Tensile Behavior of Basalt Textile Reinforced Concrete: Effect of Test Setups and Textile Ratios

The clevis-grip tensile test is usually employed to evaluate the mechanical properties of textile reinforced concrete (TRC) composites, which is actually a bond test and is unsuitable for determining reliable design parameters. Thus, the clevis-grip tensile test needs further improvement to obtain foreseeable results concerning TRC tensile behavior. This paper presents the experimental results of twenty-one tension tests performed on basalt TRC (BTRC) thin plates with different test setups, i.e., clevis-grip and improved clevis-grip, and with different textile ratios. The influences of test setups and textile ratios on crack patterns, failure mode, and tensile stress-strain curves with characteristic parameters were analyzed in depth to judge the feasibility of the new test setup. The results indicated that with the new test setup, BTRC composites exhibited textile rupture at failure; in addition, multi-cracks occurred to the BTRC composites as the textile ratio exceeded 1.44%. In this case, the obtained results relied on textile properties, which can be considered reliable for design purposes. The modified ACK model with a textile utilization rate of 50% provided accurate predictions for the tensile stress-strain behavior of the BTRC composite derived from the improved test setup. The proposed test setup enables the adequate utilization of BTRC composite and the reliability of obtained results related to the occurrence of textile rupture; nevertheless, further work is required to better understand the key parameters affecting the textile utilization rate, such as the strength of the concrete matrix.