Experimental study of compression performance of concrete cylinder strengthened by textile reinforced engineering cement composites

In order to make full use of fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) in retrofitting and overcome the poor anti-cracking property of textile reinforced mortar, a new composite was developed, where the engineering cement composite (ECC) replaces the mortar as the inorganic adhesive to bond the FRP textile, while, it still lacks of fundamental researches on the mechanism for retrofitting. Taking polyethylene type ECC as substrate, the mechanism for strengthening concrete columns by FRP grid/ECC was focused. The experimental study was conducted for standard concrete cylinder, strengthened by FRP grid/ECC where new ECC material was served as the matrix. The testing variables were plain concrete strength and different textile grid, i.e. basalt fiber reinforced polymer (BFRP) and carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) grid. The uniaxial compressive performance was studied. The test results show that the new strengthening method can improve the crushing failure mode, and enhance the compression strength and ductility. Based on the material property of FRP grid/ECC, the two-phase strengthening mechanism was proposed in this study, for the development of method to predict the compression capacity of FRP grid/ECC strengthened concrete cylinder.