Modelling of flexural fatigue behaviours of hybrid engineered cementitious composite link slabs using cycle-driven analysis

Abstract

Link slabs are designed and expected to be serviced under high-cycle traffic loadings. Although their high-cycle fatigue performance is critical in their practical applications, very few experimental and numerical studies have been conducted to study high-cycle fatigue failure of link slabs due to the huge amount of time and resources needed for fatigue tests and the lack of efficient modelling method for high-cycle fatigue failure. Recently, as a newly developed material with superior mechanical properties, the hybrid fibre reinforced engineered cementitious composite (hybrid ECC) has been recommended for link slab application. In this study, a novel and efficient cycle-driven analysis (CDA) procedure was developed to model the structural behaviour of ECC link slabs made of the hybrid ECC under high-cycle fatigue loadings, which is the first attempt for CDA to be applied in high-cycle fatigue structural modelling of a hybrid ECC link slab with reinforcement bars. In the proposed CDA, fatigue damages of both hybrid ECC and reinforcement bars were taken into account. The accuracy and reliability of the new CDA procedure were validated by comparing the modelling predictions with the experimental results on two quarter-scaled hybrid ECC link slabs. It was found that the proposed CDA procedure could predict the overall fatigue behaviours including the deflection histories, crack patterns, fatigue life, fatigue failure mode and the residual static strength of the hybrid ECC link slabs after fatigue damage with good accuracy.