Cyclic bridging law of steel fibre-reinforced and rubberised cement-based materials

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to establish the cyclic bridging law of fibre-reinforced and rubberised materials. In this regard, uniaxial tensile fatigue tests controlled by crack mouth opening displacement were conducted. Different mortars incorporating or not rubber aggregates were tested and compared. Results show that the bridging stress decreases with the number of fatigue cycles for the same maximum crack width, irrespective of nature of the composite. The cyclic bridging stress degradation for large pre-cracked widths is limited for mortar reinforced with metallic fibres. In case of rubberised mortar, cyclic bridging stress degradation is limited at small pre-cracked width values. A combined use of rubber aggregates and fibres in the mortar appeared to be a suitable solution to limit the cyclic bridging stress degradation. Moreover, a mathematical fit on cyclic crack bridging law for fibre-reinforced and rubberised materials is proposed.

Keywords:

• Fibre-reinforcement
• rubber aggregates
• repair
• cyclic bridging stress

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to University of Engineering and Technology Lahore - Pakistan for the financial support of the thesis which is the source of this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.