Numerical study on flexural behaviour of steel reinforced polyvinyl alcohol-engineered cementitious composite beams

This paper presents a finite element model for numerical analysis of the flexural behaviour of steel reinforced polyvinyl alcohol-engineered cementitious composite (PVA-ECC) beams. A polyline model and trilinear model were used to simulate the compressive and tensile behaviour of the PVA-ECC, respectively. Concrete Damaged Plasticity model was used to define the damage behaviour of the PVA-ECC material. In addition, a theoretical scaling ratio was employed to scale those tensile properties obtained from two-dimensional uniaxial tensile coupon tests to the corresponding realistic values applicable to three-dimensional block specimens. The developed finite element model was employed to simulate the flexural behaviour of steel reinforced PVA-ECC beams. It is found that the simulated load-deflection relationship agreed with that obtained from the experiments, and the agreement demonstrated the effectiveness of the finite element model.