ABSTRACT
To overcome the fracture-based phenomenon of reflective cracking, a ductile cement-based material is considered. Within the class of high performance fiber-reinforced cementitious composites (HPFRCC), Engineered Cementitious Composite (ECC) has been designed to exhibit ductility more commonly exhibited by ductile metals than brittle cement-based matrices. Developed through micromechanical tailoring of the components (i.e. cement, sand, and fibers), ECC exhibits an ultimate tensile strain capacity of 3%–5%, depending on the specific mixture (Li 2003). This tensile ductility, over 300 times that of normal concrete, is realized through the formation of a large number of closely spaced microcracks under load.
