Monotonic and fatigue performance in bending of fiber-reinforced engineered cementitious composite in overlay system

This paper presents an experimental study and theoretical analyses on the monotonic and fatigue performance in bending of a polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) fiber-reinforced engineered cementitious composite (ECC) overlay system. The influence of the interfacial characteristics between overlay and old concrete substrate on the overall bending performance is investigated. The experimental results show that when ECC is used as overlay material, both load carrying capacity and deformability represented by deflection at peak load of the overlaid beams in flexure are significantly increased compared to those of plain concrete (PC) overlaid beams. The fatigue life of ECC overlaid beams in flexure is not influenced by the layer/base interfacial characteristics, such as smooth cutting surface or sand-blasted rough surface. However, the deformation ability of the overlaid beams, such as deflection at midpoint of beam, in both static and cyclic loading cases are influenced by the interfacial property. The smooth casting surface leads to larger deformation at peak load under monotonic loading and at failure under fatigue loading than the corresponding values for beams with a rough casting surface. The present study demonstrates that reflective cracking failure in pavement overlays can be eliminated by the use of a ductile material such as ECC.