The ductile behavior of HPFRCC in compression

The ductility of High Performance Fiber Reinforced Cementitious Composites (HPFRCC) can be developed both in tension and compression. This aspect is evidenced in the present paper by measuring the mechanical response of normal concrete (NC), self-compacting concrete (SC) and HPFRCC cylindrical specimens under uniaxial and triaxial compression. The post-peak behaviour of these specimens is defined by a non-dimensional function that relates the inelastic displacement and the relative stress during softening. Both for NC and SC, the increase of the fracture toughness with the confinement stress is observed. Conversely, HPFRCC shows, even in absence of confinement, practically the same ductility measured in normal and self-compacting concretes with a confining pressure. Thus, the presence of HPFRCC in compressed columns is itself sufficient to create a sort of active distributed confinement.