Recent developments in Engineered/Strain-Hardening Cementitious Composites (ECC/SHCC) with high and ultra-high strength

Due to the excellent tensile strain-hardening and multiple-cracking behavior, Engineered Cementitious Com-posites (ECC), which are also known as Strain-Hardening Cementitious Composites (SHCC) or ultra-high-toughness cementitious composites (UHTCC), are attracting more and more attention from the research com-munity of high-performance fiber-reinforced cementitious composites. Very recent efforts have been seen in the development of ECC with high/ultra-high compressive strength. This study aims to review the recent de-velopments in high/ultra-high-strength ECC from material design to structural application, where two categories of this material are focused on: high-strength ECC (HS-ECC, 80-150 MPa in compression) and ultra-high-strength ECC (UHS-ECC, > 150 MPa in compression). All these two types of ECC have been developed based on the use of high-performance synthetic fibers [e.g., ultra-high-molecular-weight (UHMW) polyethylene (PE) fibers] and cementitious matrices with very dense microstructures. The reviewed mechanical properties of HS/UHS-ECC available in the literature include compressive strength, tensile strength and ductility, cracking behavior, dy-namic performance, and fatigue behavior. The use of supplementary cementitious materials (e.g., slag, fly ash, and rice husk ash) and alternative aggregates (e.g., sea-sand and artificial aggregates) in the development of the green and high performance matrices for improved sustainability of HS/UHS-ECC is also summarized. The po-tential structural applications of HS/UHS-ECC and the future perspectives and challenges of HS/UHS-ECC are discussed.