Textile Reinforced Concrete – Realization in applications
Textile Reinforced Concrete (TRC) is a composite material made of open-meshed textile structures and a fine-grained concrete. Comparable to steel reinforcement the textile fabric bears the tensile forces released by the cracking of the concrete. Only a minimal concrete cover is required for the bond of the textile fabrics. Thus, the application of TRC leads to the design of filigree and lightweight concrete structures with high durability and high quality surfaces. In recent years, TRC has been successfully employed for the production of ventilated facade systems. Current investigations enlarge the application range of TRC to facade systems with large spans and load-bearing structures. In this paper, the investigations on self-supporting and structural sandwich panels regarding production methods, results of bending and shear tests, tests on sound insulation and fire resistance as well as first prototypes of slender frames and shell elements are presented.
Comparison of Different Types of Glass Reinforcement for HPC Facade Elements from Mechanical and Economical Aspects
Concrete as the one of the most used material in civil engineering has also a very high negative environmental impact. In recent years’ environmental parameters of all building materials become the most important aspect. Especially reduction of concrete is becoming a very hot topic around the word because it can lead to the reduction of environmental impacts especially the consumption of primary energy, primary non-renewable materials and CO2 production. Textile reinforced concrete (TRC) is one of the possibilities to reduce amount of concrete in the structures. It is possible to design very thin structures because of non-corrosive properties of textile reinforcement and thus distinctly reduce the thickness. Combination with high performance concrete (HPC) allows to creating construction with mechanical properties on a required high level. This paper presents mechanical and economical comparison of different types of AR-glass reinforcement for HPC facade elements with the same amount of concrete.
Evaluation of buckling load and dynamic performance of steel shear wall retrofitted with strips made of shape memory alloy
One of the most imperfections of the steel shear wall is out of plane displacements that cause severe damage in both structural and non-structural elements. In this paper, the effects of shape-memory alloys on steel shear walls are investigated. First, a numerical analysis using the finite element method in ABAQUS software has been carried out according to an experimental test. The results of the numerical analysis have been verified with experimental results. Next, shape-memory alloy fibers have been added vertically and horizontally to various parts of the steel shear wall. The results show that retrofitting with the shape-memory alloy reduces the out-of-plane displacement of the steel shear wall under both cyclic and seismic loadings. Besides, the buckling load in the steel shear wall increases when it is retrofitted with the shape-memory alloy. Also, the total out-of-plane movement (accumulated absolute displacements) of the steel shear wall and non-structural damage are controlled by the characteristic of a shape-memory alloy material called “super-elastic”.