Evaluation of Tensile Stress and Strain Capacity Using UM Method

As an emerging advanced construction material, Engineered Cementitious Composites (ECC) have seen increasing in the field applications recently to take advantage of its unique tensile strain hardening behavior. Yet existing uniaxial tensile test method of ECC are relatively complicated and sometimes difficult to implement for quality control purposes in field applications. Hence, alternate methods are developed to evaluate the tensile stress and stress capacities of ECC. One such method is University of Michigan (UM) method developed by Qian and Li (Qian and Li in J Adv Concr Technol 6:353–363, 2008 [1]). In this study the tensile strain stress–strain behavior of ECC is evaluated using the four-point bending test as prescribed by UM method. At first, four-point bending test is conducted of beam specimen 356 × 50 × 76 mm, from which the load and load-point deflection are obtained. Then, by using the proposed equations in UM method the obtained load and load-point deflection are converted to tensile stress and strain capacity. Finally, the obtained results are compared against the University of Michigan, Heriot-Watt University (HWU) and Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology (ITS) methods using the virtual platform. Further, from the results it is understood that the UM method is more convenient and robust for evaluating the tensile stress and strain capacities.