High-Performance Impact-Resistant Concrete Mixture for Transportation Infrastructure Applications

Engineered cementitious composites (ECC) is a class of high-performance fiber-reinforced cementitious composites featuring metal-like strain-hardening behavior under tension and high ductility. The highly ductile behavior of ECC often results in high impact resistance and energy absorption capacity, which make ECC suitable for applications in structures that are prone to impact damages, like exterior bridge girders, bridge piers, and crash barriers. In a recent study, a new ECC mixture has been developed using domestically available polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) fibers and regular river sand in replacement of imported PVA fibers and fine silica sand that are normally used in other ECC mixtures. The newly developed mixture, with improved local accessibility of raw materials, enables structural-scale applications of ECC in transportation infrastructures. To evaluate the suitability of the mixture for impact-resistant structures, in this paper, the tensile and flexural behavior of the newly developed material were characterized under pseudo-static loading and high strain-rate loadings up to 10⁻¹ s⁻¹. Direct drop-weight impact test was also conducted to assess the impact resistance and energy absorption capacity of the material. It was ensured that the ECC mixture maintains high tensile strain capacity above 1.8% under all tested strain rates. Regarding the damage characteristics, energy absorption capacity and load-bearing capacity during repeated impact loadings, ECC was found to have 75% higher energy dissipation capacity compared with regular reinforced concrete specimens and superior damage tolerance. The research results demonstrated that the newly developed ECC has a great potential to improve the impact resistance of transportation infrastructures.