Flexural behavior of basalt textile-reinforced concrete

Abstract

Textile-reinforced concrete (TRC) as a novel high performance composite material can be used as not only strengthening material but component bearing load alone. This paper aims to investigate the influences of the number of textile layers, prestress levels of textile, and volume contents of chopped steel fibers on the flexural behavior of basalt textile-reinforced concrete (BTRC) plate through four-point bending tests on 24 experimental cases. Flexural strength and toughness were observed to improve with the increase of the number of textile layers. Prestress on the textiles contributed to improving the first-crack flexural stress and pre-cracking flexural stiffness of the BTRC, but the flexural strength and toughness were found to decrease with the increase of the prestress level. The addition of chopped steel fibers in the matrix was revealed to positively affect the first-crack flexural stress, flexural strength, and post-cracking flexural stiffness and toughness. Moreover, the crack pattern, which features a high crack number and reduced crack spacing, was achieved with the increase of the number of textile layers and the volume content of chopped steel fibers. However, the crack number reduced and the average crack spacing increased with the increasing prestress level of the textiles. The prestress and chopped steel fibers significantly improved the flexural behaviors of BTRC, which contributes to the application of BTRC flexural components. The paper presents the formulas for calculating the flexural strength of non-prestressed BTRC without chopped steel fibers, and the calculation formulas can be used to guide the design of such BTRC flexural components.