Tensile Constitutive Model of Engineered Cementitious Composites Reinforced by High-Strength Steel Wire Mesh

Abstract

The presentation of a constitutive model could help researchers to predict the mechanical behavior of a material, which also contributes to the further generalization of the material. This paper is to explore the tensile constitutive model of engineered cementitious composites (ECCs) reinforced by high-strength steel wire mesh based on experiments and numerical simulations. DIANA was used to simulate the tensile process of the specimens, and experiments were carried out to validate the numerical model. The effect of the ECCs’ tensile strength, reinforcement ratio and specimen size were considered during the specimen design process. The results showed that most of the errors of the simulated values compared to the experimental results were within 5%, which proved that the numerical model was quite accurate. The proposed constitutive model revealed the different roles played by ECCs and high-strength steel wires at different stress stages, and the calculation results were in high agreement with the simulation results, indicating the effectiveness of the constitutive model. The study in this paper could provide an important reference for the popularization and application of ECCs reinforced by high-strength steel wire mesh.