ZHENG Yin-lin, MA Feng-ling, LIU Yan-xia (Department of Structure and Material, IWHR, Beijing 100038, China)

Abstract: In this paper, experimental research was carried out on Engineered Cementitious Composites with polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) fiber. To study the effect of thickener on the properties of PVA-ECC, ECC mortar with different thickener dosage was prepared for uniaxial tensile tests, compressive strength tests and flexural strength tests. The test results showed that appropriate thickener dosage could obviously increase the cohesiveness and greatly reduce the bleeding of ECC mortar. On the other hand, the use of thickener effectively eliminated the balling of PVA fibers, and consequently improved the dispersible uniformity of PVA fivers in mortar. At a PVA volume fraction of 1%, ECC with a thickener dosage of 0.10%-0.15% has both higher tensile strength and larger deformability.

Key words: thickener, PVA-ECC, tensile strain

Published in: Journal of China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research (Vol. 10 No. 4, 2012)