Stress-Based Fatigue Performance and Fatigue Life Prediction of Engineered Cementitious Composites

Abstract

The ductile performance of engineered cementitious composite (ECC) mixtures allows them to have a better fatigue life compared to traditional concrete. In this work, the effects of mineral admixtures and the aggregate size on the fatigue performance of ECC under bending were experimentally investigated. In addition, the failure probabilities under fatigue loading were also determined using the Weibull distribution. Finally, in order to shorten the process of fatigue testing, a prediction method for the fatigue life of ECC mixtures was proposed. It was found out that the use of ground granulated blast furnace slag instead of fly ash and the use of a larger aggregate size reduced the fatigue life of the original ECC mixture (ECC-M45). Moreover, the fatigue life estimated using the proposed method was in a good agreement with the experimentally-determined ones.