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Nowadays limestone powder and blast furnace slag (BFS) are widely used in concrete as blended materials in cement. The replacement of Portland cement by limestone powder and BFS can lower the cost and enhance the greenness of concrete, since the production of these two materials needs less energy and causes less CO 2 emission than Portland cement. Moreover, the use of limestone powder and BFS improves the properties of fresh and hardened concrete, such as workability and durability. Engineered cementitious composites (ECC) is a class of ultra ductile fiber reinforced cementitious composites, characterized by high ductility, tight crack width control and relatively low fiber content. The limestone powder and BFS are used to produce ECC in this research. The mix proportion is designed experimentally by adjusting the amount of limestone powder and BFS, accompanied by four-point bending test and uniaxial tensile test. This study results in an ECC mix proportion with the Portland cement content as low as 15% of powder by weight. This mixture, at 28 days, exhibits a high tensile strain capacity of 3.3%, a tight crack width of 57 lm and a moderate compressive strength of 38 MPa. In order to promote a wide use of ECC, it was tried to simplify the mixing of ECC with only two matrix materials, i.e. BFS cement and limestone powder, instead of three matrix materials. By replacing Portland cement and BFS in the aforementioned ECC mixture with BFS cement, the ECC with BFS cement and limestone powder exhibits a tensile strain capacity of 3.1%, a crack width of 76 lm and a compressive strength of 40 MPa after 28 days of curing.

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As emerging advanced construction materials, strain hardening cementitious composites (SHCCs) have seen increasing field applications recently to take advantage of its unique tensile strain hardening behavior, yet existing uniaxial tensile tests are relatively complicated and sometime difficult to implement, particularly for quality control purpose in field applications. This paper presents a new simple inverse method for quality control of tensile strain capacity by conducting beam bending test. It is shown through a theoretical model that the beam deflection from a flexural test can be linearly related to tensile strain capacity. A master curve relating this easily measured structural element property to material tensile strain capacity is constructed from parametric studies of a wide range of material tensile and compressive properties. This proposed method (UM method) has been validated with uniaxial tensile test results with reasonable agreement. In addition, this proposed method is also compared with the Japan Concrete Institute (JCI) method. Comparable accuracy is found, yet the present method is characterized with much simpler experiment setup requirement and data interpretation procedure. Therefore, it is expected that this proposed method can greatly simplify the quality control of SHCCs both in execution and interpretation phases, contributing to the wider acceptance of this type of new material in field applications.

Pavement systems provide critical infrastructure services to society but also pose significant impacts related to large material consumption, energy inputs, and capital investment. A life-cycle model was developed to estimate environmental impacts resulting from material production and distribution, overlay construction and preservation, construction-related traffic congestion, overlay usage, and end of life management. To improve sustainability in pavement design, a promising alternative material, engineered cementitious composites ͑ECC͒ was explored. Compared to conventional concrete and hot-mixed asphalt overlay systems, the ECC overlay system reduces life-cycle energy consumption by 15 and 72%, greenhouse gas emissions by 32 and 37%, and costs by 40 and 47%, respectively. Material, construction-related traffic congestion, and pavement surface roughness effects were identified as the greatest contributors to environmental impacts throughout the overlay life cycle. The sensitivity analysis indicated that traffic growth has much greater impact on the life-cycle energy consumption and environmental impacts of overlay systems compared to fuel economy improvements.