Abstract
Weft-knitted textiles offer many advantages over conventional woven fabrics since they allow the fabrication of doubly curved geometries without the need of stitching multiple patches together. This study investigated the use of high-strength continuous fibres as knitted textile reinforcement, focusing on various knitting patterns, fibre materials, coating types and spatial features to enhance the bond conditions between concrete and reinforcement. The bond is of particular interest since the contact surface of knitted textiles is fundamentally different due to their closed surface, compared to commercially available textile reinforcement, which is normally formed as orthogonally woven grids of rovings. An experimental campaign consisting of 28 textile-concrete composites was conducted, where digital image correlation-based measurements were used to assess the load-deformation behaviour and to analyse the crack kinematics. The results showed a beneficial post-cracking behaviour for epoxy coated configurations with straight inlays. The comparison of these configurations with conventional textile reinforcement generally showed a similar behaviour, but with higher utilisation compared to the filament strength. The Tension Chord Model, which assumes a constant bond stress-slip relationship, was adapted for the specific geometry of the knitted reinforcement, and it was used for the estimation of bond stresses and a post-diction of the experimental results, generally showing a good agreement.
Highlights
As the construction industry strives to reduce its ecological footprint, textile reinforced concrete has been identified as a solution with high potential to meet the demands for more efficient and lightweight structures with less material consumption
The analysis of the specimens with directly knitted reinforcement mainly investigated on the general load-deformation behaviour and the failure modes of this new type of reinforcement, exploring the peculiarities arising from different knitting patterns
A special focus was given to the refined measurements and analysis regarding the cracking behaviour and crack kinematics obtained using the digital image correlation-based measurement system
Summary
As the construction industry strives to reduce its ecological footprint, textile reinforced concrete has been identified as a solution with high potential to meet the demands for more efficient and lightweight structures with less material consumption. The use of materials not affected by corrosion such as aramid, carbon or glass fibre enable the construction of much thinner elements compared to conventional steel reinforcement since there is no need for a thick concrete cover to prevent. The high tensile strength of the fibres (around 3000 MPa–4000 MPa) allows an efficient use of materials in ultimate limit state. Serviceability requirements might become governing for the final design
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