Yes / Formation of cracks represents one of the major causes of concrete deterioration, which can lead to durability
and safety issues. In this work, a novel crack closure system is developed, using polyethylene terephthalate (PET)
polymer fibres embedded in a mortar mix. The PET polymer has shape memory properties and shrinks upon
thermal activation, if free to do so, or otherwise exerts shrinkage restraint forces. A single knot was manufactured
at each end of the PET fibres to provide mechanical anchorage into the mortar matrix. Mortar samples with
embedded knotted fibres were pre-cracked and subsequently placed in an oven to thermally activate the polymers
and induce the shrinkage mechanism into the fibres. Crack closure was measured in the range 45–100%,
depending on the geometry, dimension and distribution of the fibres, and the size of the initial crack. / This work is supported by UKRI-EPSRC (Grant No. EP/P02081X/1, Resilient Materials 4 Life, RM4L).
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/18127 |
| Date | 06 September 2020 |
| Creators | Maddalena, R., Bonanno, L., Balzano, B., Tuinea-Bobe, Cristina-Luminita, Sweeney, John, Mihai, I. |
| Source Sets | Bradford Scholars |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article, Published version |
| Rights | © 2020 Elsevier. Reproduced in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. |
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