Evaluation of Shear and Tensile Bridging Characteristics of PVA Fibers Based on Bridging Law

Strain-Hardening Cementitious Composites (SHCC), in which short fibers are mixed in mortar, show improved tensile performance and ductility of the cementitious material because fibers bridging the crack transfer tensile forces after first cracking. It is considered that the stress field at the shear crack surface in the structural element under the shear force is a biaxial stress field in which tensile and shear stresses exist concurrently. In fiber-reinforced cementitious composites, both tensile and shear stresses are transmitted via fibers that bridge shear cracks. It is necessary that the effect of fibers bridging a shear crack under tensile and shear stresses is investigated. In this study, uniaxial tension tests were carried out for specimens which have a square cross-section and an inclined notch. The biaxial stress field can be expressed by the inclined crack surface produced by the tensile loading. From the test results, it was confirmed that the tensile stress decreased with increasing notch angle in the tension tests. A calculation method for the bridging law with an inclined crack was introduced and the calculation results were compared with the test results. Though the maximum tensile stress in the tests was smaller than that in the calculation results, the curves after the maximum stress show good agreements with the calculations. The maximum stress reached in the tests tends to decrease with increasing crack angle (notch angle) as in the calculation results