Tailoring an impact resistant engineered cementitious composite (ECC) by incorporation of crumb rubber
Zhigang Zhang, Fengjiang Qin, Hui Ma, Liangjin Xu
Abstract
In this paper, incorporating crumb rubber is proposed to tailor an impact resistant Engineered Cementitious Composites (ECC). The tensile performance of the newly tailored ECC under various loading-rates and mechanical responses under impact loads were experimentally investigated via uniaxial tensile test and drop weight test, respectively. The results showed that, as compared with control ECC (N-ECC), the ECC with incorporation of crumb rubber (CR-ECC) presented an enhanced tensile strain capacity under quasi-static loading, meanwhile, the rate dependency on ductility almost was not observed in it when underwent high loading-rates. At micro-scale, the crumb rubber in ECC decreased its matrix toughness and fiber/matrix interfacial chemical bond, both of which facilitated the delay of its rate dependency on ductility. Under direct impact loading, the CR-ECC panel was still maintained as a structural integrity after 10 impacts whereas the N-ECC panel tended to fail after first impact, which confirmed that incorporating crumb rubber into ECC could enhance its robustness and damage tolerance effectively under impact load, and may make it an impact resistant structural material.