Shear behavior of reinforced Engineered Cementitious Composites (ECC) beams

This paper describes an experimental investigation of the shear behavior of beams consisting of steel reinforced Engineered Cementitious Composites (ECC). Based on the strain hardening and multiple cracking behavior of ECC, this study investigates the extent to which ECC can improve the shear capacity of beams loaded primarily in shear and if ECC can partially or fully replace the conventional transverse steel reinforcement in beams.

However, there is a lack of understanding of how the fibers affect the shear carrying capacity and deformation behavior of structural members if used either in combination with conventional transverse reinforcement or exclusively to provide shear resistance. The experimental investigation focuses on the influence of fibers on the shear caring capacity and the crack development in ECC beams subjected to shear.

The experimental program consists of ECC with short randomly distributed PVA (polyvinyl alcohol) fiber beams with different stirrup spacing and reinforced concrete (RC) beams for comparison. Displacement and strain measurements taken using the ARAMIS photogrammetric data acquisition system by means of processing at high frame rate captured images of applied a high contrast speckle pattern to the beams surface.

The multiple micro cracking resulting from the strain-hardening response of ECC in tension develop in a di-agonal between the load and support point. The formation of multiple micro cracks is highly dependent on the tensile stress-strain behavior of the ECC. The shear crack formation mechanism of ECC is investigated and found to be characterized by an opening of the cracks prior to sliding.

Several analytical models on shear de-sign of ECC and concrete beams are evaluated and compared to the experimentally obtained results. The pro-visions of the Eurocode and ACI Code are found to be over-conservative but can be modified by utilizing the tensile strength of ECC. An expression for the load carrying capacity is proposed by expressing the ECC shear strength in terms of the crack angle.