A data-enhanced approach for early-age drying induced moisture transport analysis on in-situ casted textile fibre reinforced concrete

Abstract

With the addition of textile fibres that alters pore structure, the novel Textile Fibre Reinforced Concrete (TFRC) exhibits great potential in reducing drying shrinkage and enhancing long-term durability. To advance material design, this study aims at developing a coupled experimental-numerical framework with a data-enhanced approach to identify the essential material properties that govern the moisture transportation in TFRC. The scope of analysis covers the TFRC manufactured with various fibre types and different fibre volumes, where the time-dependent effect associated with early age is investigated. An inverse analysis framework, coupling Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO) and extended support vector regression (XSVR), is developed and validated against experimentation by monitoring moisture distribution. Results reveals that the incorporation of textile fibres leads to a substantial reduction in the moisture diffusivity of TFRC, as opposed to conventional concrete of identical w/b and aggregate content. Notably, TFRC mixtures with 0.4 % Nylon twist and PTT600 fibres showed a 95 % reduction in moisture diffusivity compared to the conventional concrete. This discovery illustrates the capability of textile fibres, when optimally introduced, to mitigate moisture loss from cementitious materials, reducing drying shrinkage of concrete building. The proposed approach is demonstrated to be able to robustly quantify the early-age moisture transportation in TFRC, which is of potential to guide future concrete design of using textile fibre reinforcement towards controlling early-age shrinkage in building industry.