A fundamental method for prediction of failure of strain hardening cementitious composites without prior information

Abstract

Strain Hardening cementitious composites (SHCCs) have been known to produce excellent crack width control and very good tensile strain capacity. As a result, strategically introducing SHCCs would lead to significant carbon saving through the creation of structures that are durable and could potentially undergo autogenous self-healing. However, for wider acceptability of any new material requires long term empirical data. This may be circumvented by continually ensuring a structure made with this new material is serviceable i.e. material has not failed. We present an approach to predict failure time without any prior information on operating conditions and material information for SHCCs. This method is based on the modeling of ‘finite time singularity’ based on mathematical laws. The method produces fairly accurate results when applied to estimate failure for SHCCs with a wide range of failure times and to both linear and non-linear loading regimes. The practical applicability of this method was thus demonstrated.