Development of impregnation technique for glass fibre mats to process textile reinforced cementitious composites

A controllable impregnation of glass fibre structures used in high performance fibre reinforced cement composites can nowadays only be obtained by hand lay-up means, constraining possible structural applications of this promising composite. This paper discusses an innovative manufacturing process designed for the mechanical impregnation of textile reinforcements by a suitable cement matrix. The basic principles of this self-compacting impregnator (SCI) as well as the manufacturing of the cement based laminates will be explained. For comparison, uniaxial tensile strength and interlaminar shear strength were measured on specimens obtained by both production techniques, hand lay-up and SCI. The quality obtained with the laboratory prototype SCI is comparable with the quality obtained by hand lay-up.