Experimental and analytical study of flexural creep of impregnated woven fabric-reinforced concrete

Textile-reinforced concrete (TRC) is a promising composite material that has growing demands in the construction industry. The time-dependent behavior of TRC is a less-studied characteristic of these materials. Since the wide use of TRC in constructing thin-walled concrete structures, the present study performed an experimental and analytical study on the flexural creep of concrete reinforced with resin-impregnated woven fabrics. An analytical viscoelastic model is developed based on multi-scale micromechanics, classical lamination theory, and Alfrey's correspondence principle to predict the upper and lower limits of creep deformation of TRC. Due to uncertainty observed in the cracking force of TRC, this parameter is considered a random variable with normal distribution. Probabilistic intervals are calculated for TRC midspan creep deflections. Short-term and long-term creep tests are conducted to evaluate the proposed model. The results showed that a probabilistic model is more appropriate to predict the creep behavior of TRC rather than a deterministic model.