Abstract
The theoretical stress-strain behaviour of individual fibre reinforced cement composites is reviewed. Based on the multiple cracking concept of the existing theory, analytical expressions are developed to describe the tensile stress-strain behaviour of a fibre-cement hybrid composite consisting of three components, i.e. two reinforcing fibres with different moduli, strengths and strains to failure and a common cement binder. The model predicts that the tensile stress-strain curve of the hybrid composites consists of five stages, instead of three stages of the existing models for individual fibre cements, and relates the tensile behaviour of each stage to the component properties of the components and the test system parameters. A description is given of the physical and mechanical properties of four types of reinforcing fibres used in the study. These were fibrillated polypropylene film, alkali-resistant glass, polyvinyl alcohol fibres and carbon fibres. A small number of direct tensile tests on continuous glass, carbon and polyvinyl alcohol were performed. The tensile stress-strain behaviour of four types of fibre-cement hybrid composites was studied with particular emphasis on that of the glass- polypropylene hybrids for which the flexural load-deflection behaviour was also examined. It is shown that the fibre-cement hybrid composites yield superior engineering properties over their parent composites and the improvements are sensitive to volume fractions of each of the two fibres. The measured tensile stress-strain curves of the hybrids were compared with the theoretical predictions and satisfactory agreement in general is obtained. Implications from the present work for the design of fibre-cement hybrid composites are assessed.