Bendable concrete in construction: Material selection case studies

Abstract

• A dataset of ECCs is created and manually installed in Ansys Granta Selector. • ECC fills empty space on the material property charts (Ashby charts). • Material selection examples dealing with a bridge deck link slab are employed. • ECC outperforms conventional concrete materials in all case scenarios considered. Engineered cementitious composites (ECCs) have been developed to solve one of the most fundamental drawbacks in the most produced materials for our built environment. Namely, the brittle nature of concrete. ECC or ‘bendable’ concrete has evolved from the endeavors of a single research group to a material family in its own right, studied in hundreds of research laboratories and actively deployed in structures around the world. ECCs are a class of cementitious materials with unique tensile properties that are distinct from normal cement-based materials. This sort of material innovation is exactly what is anticipated when material property charts (Ashby charts) display empty areas in the material-property space. This paper demonstrates the uniqueness and advantages of these materials with a set of material selection case studies dealing with a bridge deck link slab. The material selection is carried out using Ansys Granta Selector, with ECCs added as new records into the existing database. The case studies show how ECCs outperform conventional concrete materials and highlight the potential of ECCs in construction.