Mechanical Properties of Engineered Cementitious Composites Beams Fabricated by Extrusion-Based 3D (2021-04)¶

Engineered cementitious composites (ECC) is emerging as promising candidate cementitious materials for 3D concrete printing (3DCP). This paper experimentally investigated the bending behaviors of 3D printed ECC beams with different geometric configuration. A novel mix design for ECC with ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (PE) fiber was developed and the PE-ECC beams were casted by two methods, i.e., mold-cast and extrusion-based 3D printing. The four-point bending tests were conducted for plain ECC beams, reinforced concrete (RC) beams as well as cast-in-situ unreinforced ECC beam. The influences of different parameters including fabrication methods, print angles and superposition types were particularly investigated. The anisotropic mechanical properties under bending of printed beams and bending capacity of cast in place reinforced concrete beams were also investigated. Also, the strain distribution of longitudinal steel reinforcement in reinforced concrete as well as printed ECC beam were studied. The results indicated that the printed ECC beam presented a ductile failure mode accompanied with strain hardening behaviors. Also, the ECC beams exposed to z direction loading showed better mechanical anisotropic properties when compared with those exposed to x direction.