Experimental investigation and analytical modelling of shear strength of thin walled textile-reinforced UHPC beams

Abstract

The combination of two high performance materials, ultra-high performance concrete and carbon reinforcement, allows for the construction of efficient, durable thin-walled structural elements. In order to investigate the shear behaviour of such elements a test series on thin-webbed textile reinforced T-beams was planned and carried out at the Institute of Structural Engineering at TU Wien. In the experiments the efficiency of carbon textile reinforcement grids with different impregnation materials used as shear reinforcement was analysed. Furthermore, the shear span to effective depth ratio as well as the effect of prestressing on the shear carrying capacity was investigated. This article describes the experimental programme and shows the test results. The evaluation of the results indicates a higher shear performance of beams with lower-tex sand coated, acrylonitrile-styrene-acrylate copolymers impregnated textile fabrics than with Heavy-Tow grids with an epoxy resin impregnation. For the case of prestressing the carbon fibre reinforced polymer an additional increase of the shear carrying capacity of the thin-walled carbon textile reinforced structures was verified.