Flexural behaviour of thin textile reinforced concrete slabs enhanced by chemical prestressing

Abstract

Textile reinforcement gains recently increasing attention within the civil engineering field, especially for thin concrete elements such as facade slabs. Chemical prestressing, a method of inducing stresses using concrete with expansive admixtures, is an approach to enhance the performance of such slabs and allow for the better cracking behaviour and higher utilization of material properties of the textile reinforcement. This method was applied for thin slabs with epoxy impregnated carbon textile reinforcement. The slabs were investigated in four point bending tests and their cracking pattern was analysed with distributed fibre optic sensors and digital image correlation method. Chemical prestress positively influenced the load at initial crack formation and the corresponding deflection.