Aspects of Creep Behavior of Textile Reinforcements for Composite Materials

ABSTRACT

Numerous technical applications utilize fiber reinforced composites made with high performance glass and/or carbon fibers. These fibers are especially desirable due to their mechanical and chemical properties resulting in high tensile strength. A relatively new application field is textile reinforced concrete (TRC), which is composed of a textile structure made up of multifilament yarns (rovings) and a cement matrix. To guarantee that the fibers retain their strength over long periods of time in an alkaline milieu, alkaline resistant materials such as alkali-resistant glass fibers (AR-glass) are used. Further requirements placed on textile reinforcements include excellent mechanical properties, such as high strength and stiffness, which remain unchanged or are nominally altered under long-term stresses. These properties will be discussed in this paper within the framework of an experiment conducted, which observed the behavior of AR-glass rovings under continuous long-term stress relative to time. The paper analyzes and interprets the results obtained on the yarns’ mechanical properties. The objective was to develop a mechanical model of the material behavior of the textile structures to aid in the prognosis of long-term behavior of textile reinforced composite materials (i.e. textile reinforced concrete).

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