Experimental Investigation on Bending Behavior of Textile Reinforced Concrete (TRC) Plates at High Temperatures

Textile Reinforced Concrete (TRC) can be used as independentstructural elements due to its high loading capacity and proper toproduct light weight and thin walled structural elements. In thisstudy, the bending behavior of TRC plates that reinforced with drycarbon fiber textile and exposed to high temperatures wasexperimentally studied under 4-points bending loading. Theexamined parameters were; (a) number of textile fiberreinforcements layers 1, 2 and 3 layers; (b) level of hightemperatures 20°C, 200°C, 300°C, and 400°C. Firstly, themechanical properties of the cementitious matrix and the tensileproperties of TRC coupons at each predefined temperature wereevaluated. The results showed that the ultimate tensile stress ofthe TRC coupons did not affect up to 200°C, however, a significantreduction observed at 300°C and 400°C by 19% and 24%respectively. Regarding the compressive strength and flexuralstrength of the cementitious matrix, the degradation was notsevere until 200°C, while it became critical at 400 °C (23% and22% respectively). The result of the bending of TRC plates showedthat doubling and tripling textile fiber reinforcements layersimproved the flexural loading. In general, increasing the level oftemperatures resulted in decrease in the flexural capacity of TRCplates. The highest decrease recorded for the specimen reinforcedwith 1-layer of carbon fiber textile subjected to 400 °C and was33%.