Experimental Investigation of Basalt/Fibre Textile Reinforced Concrete Under Uniaxial Tensile Force

Among the various solutions to retrofit existing structures, local strengthening of structural elements with Textile Reinforced Concrete (TRC) is a relatively recent technology which is considered as a possible alternative to the well-known Fibre Reinforced Polymers (FRP). As a matter of fact, due to the drawbacks of FRP, such as the difficulty to be applied on wet surfaces, the hazardousness for the workers who apply the material, and the poor behaviour at high temperature, TRC is recently gaining more popularity. The current concern about environmental issues is leading to a higher interest about the impact of materials production and their disposal at the end of life. With reference thereto, basalt textile fabrics is a material that is gaining attention due to its mechanical performances and low environmental impact. Admixing short fibres in the cementitious matrix of the TRC leads to a new material called Fibre/Textile Reinforced Concrete (F/TRC), which performs significantly bet-ter on strengthening solutions. The aim of this work is to investigate the different behaviour of a layer of Basalt-TRC (B-TRC) and Basalt-F/TRC (B-F/TRC) under tension via uniaxial tensile test. The experimental test campaign comprehends 3 B-TRC and 3 B-F/TRC specimens. The presence of short steel fibres in the cementitious matrix remarkably improves the performances of TRC in terms of maximum tensile force reached during the test and crack distribution. The significant improvement of performances of B-F/TRC com-pared to the B-TRC is expressed by the average maximum force, which increased of about 84%.