Mechanical properties and assessment of a hybrid ultra-high-performance engineered cementitious composite using calcium carbonate whiskers and polyethylene fibers

The high cost of ultra-high-performance engineered cementitious composite (UHP-ECC) is currently a crucial issue, especially in terms of the polyethylene (PE) fibers use. In this paper, cheap calcium carbonate whiskers (CW) were evaluated on the feasibility of hybrid with PE fibers. Diverse combinations of PE fibers and CW were employed to investigate the multi-scale enhancement on the UHP-ECC performance. A probabilistic-based UHP-ECC tensile strain reliability analysis approach was utilized, which was in general agreement with the experimental results. Furthermore, a multi-dimensional integrated representation was conducted for the comprehensive assessment of UHP-ECC. Results illustrated that CW improved the compressive strength and energy dissipation capacity of UHP-ECC owing to the microscopic strengthening mechanism. CW and PE fiber further promoted the saturated cracking of composite by multi-scale crack arresting effect. In particular, PE1.75-CW0.5 specimen possessed the best overall performance. The ultimate cracking width of PE1.75-CW0.5 group had 98 ㎛, which was 46.18% lower compared to PE2-CW0 group, the 28d compressive strength were slightly improved, the tensile strain capacity was comparable to that of PE2-CW0 group. The results above demonstrated that combinations of PE fiber and CW could significantly enhance the comprehensive performance of UHP-ECC, which was beneficial for large-scale engineering applications.