Decorative application of strain-hardening cementitious composites

Decorative application of strain-hardening cementitious composites

Ibrovic, V.
Lukovic, M.
Schlangen, E.

Civil Engineering and Geosciences

Structural Engineering

2014-11-03

Strain hardening cementitious composites (SHCC) have been used in variety of structural applications. Apart from this, they are also suitable for non-structural applications. In this work, the application of SHCC for producing cover plates for light switches and power sockets is presented. For design and decorative industry, cement based materials are appealing and look more natural compared to variety of plastics usually used. However, their inherent brittleness makes it difficult to be produced as very thin products, mainly due to issues with demoulding. With the addition of fibres, thin elements could be successfully demoulded. They were further subjected to standard mechanical and durability tests for this type of product. These tests included exposure to high temperatures (70°C and 95°C), varying RH (from 95% to 50%), and mechanical impact hardness tests. After these tests, samples were tested in four point bending in order to check how different exposure conditions and mechanical preloading influence the strain hardening capacity. Two different mixtures were designed, with a plate thickness of 3mm and 5mm. Slender samples cast in thinner moulds resulted in enhanced ductility due to preferential fibre orientation in plane. Samples that were exposed to high temperatures exhibited lower ductility compared to samples cured at room temperature. In addition, mechanical impact hardness test reduced the initial SHCC stiffness and maximum load capacity which might be the consequence of inducing distributed microcracking prior to bending test. Overall, SHCC showed to be a promising material for this application.

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:c8cbf05f-f08b-4d45-a313-cabba89e6c6d

RILEM

978-2-35158-150-6

SHCC3: Proceedings of the 3rd International RILEM Conference on Strain Hardening Cementitious Composites, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 3-5 November 2014; Authors version

Institutional Repository

conference paper

(c) 2014 The Author(s)
RILEM