Svetlana Verbruggen

Stay-in-Place Formwork of TRC Designed as Shear Reinforcement for Concrete Beams

In order to reduce on-site building time, the construction industry shows an increasing interest in stay-in-place formwork with a reinforcement function after concrete hardening, such as CFRP formwork confinement for columns. The current combined systems however do not answer the demand of the building industry for a material system that is both lightweight and fire safe. High performance textile reinforced cement (TRC) composites can address this need. They can be particularly interesting for the shear reinforcement of concrete beams. This paper describes a preliminary analysis and feasibility study on structural stay-in-place formwork made of TRC. Comparative bending experiments demonstrate that a fully steel reinforced beam and an equivalent beam with shear reinforcement in TRC formwork show similar yielding behaviour, indicating that the TRC shear reinforcement system actually works. Moreover, the cracking moment of the concrete was more or less doubled, resulting in a much lower deflection in serviceability limit state than calculated. Digital image correlation measurements show that the latter is due to the crack bridging capacity of the external TRC shear reinforcement.

Influence of Weathering Conditions on TRC Sandwich Renovation Panels

Using large lightweight prefabricated sandwich panels for the renovation of existing dwellings facilitates the installation process and reduces the renovation time to a few days. To guarantee the performance of the panels during their entire life span it is necessary to evaluate their behaviour on the long term. During their life span the facade panels are exposed to weather conditions such as wind, snow, rain, etc. To simulate these effects 8 sandwich beams, with a span of 2.2 m were fabricated and loaded until failure, after being subjected to repeated mechanical loading and/or and heat-rain cycles. The latter were done in a climate chamber according to ETAG004.

Experimental Investigation and Benchmarking of 3D Textile Reinforced Cementitious Composites

The last couple of years, the importance and potential of textile reinforced cementitious composites (TRC’s) has been investigated and proven in literature. The research has mainly been performed on thin-layered specimens made of individual fibre textile layers impregnated by a matrix. The drawback of this manufacturing technique however is the time-consuming process. A solution is the transition towards a three dimensional, rigid fibre textile, fully immersed in the matrix, which would drastically decrease the production time and thus improve the market uptake of these materials.

Buckling Behaviour of Structural Insulating Sandwich Walls with Textile Reinforced Cement Faces

Loadbearing insulating sandwich panels with Textile Reinforced Cement (TRC) faces can combine the structural and insulating performance of a conventional wall configuration in one lightweight element. This makes them very suitable as a new type of wall element for low- and high rise residential buildings. By combining 2D and 3D textiles in the TRC faces the performance of the panels can even be improved. This paper presents a preliminary investigation of the buckling behaviour of large-scale sandwich panels with combined 3D and 2D TRC faces. The large-scale experiment is compared with an analytical model. This paper shows that further in depth investigations are needed with regard to the experimental test set-up (boundary conditions) in order to establish a better agreement with the analytical model.

Fracture monitoring by acoustic emission: recent applications of parameter-based characterization

The present paper describes a collection of fracture monitoring cases in different materials. The cases examined include bending of textile reinforced cement (TRC), hybrid concrete-TRC lightweight beams, granite, additive manufacturing metal components, combined loading of human femur bone and pull-out in reinforced concrete. In all cases the basic role is played by acoustic emission (AE). It is shown that certain waveform parameters exhibit strong sensitivity to the rate of fracture as well as the dominant fracture mode. Parameters like frequency content and the duration of the signals supply real time trends that in the present cases are verified by optical techniques. It is concluded that AE supplies important information and allows the prediction of how the material will behave based on the initial AE recordings and before serious damage is inflicted. AE shows a very broad application range; however, the contribution of combination with other techniques is highlighted in order to increase the reliability of the interpretation of AE results.