Mechanical Properties of 3D Printed ECC Beams Reinforced with FRP Mesh

3D-printed engineered cementitious composites (ECC) members have gained increasing attention in recent years. However, the normal 3D-printed ECC beam has limited flexural strength and thus needs to be further reinforced. This paper proposed a novel reinforcement method applying fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) mesh on the ECC interface in the 3D concrete printing process. Two types of ECCs with different strain capacities were used in this paper. The effect of the proposed reinforcement on these two types of ECC beams was experimentally investigated. The results demonstrated that the reinforced ECC beams presented better flexural strength. The improvement of ductility was obtained in the low-strain capacity ECC beams, while a reduction of ductility occurred in the high-strain capacity ECC beams. The compatibility of FRP with different strain capacity ECC was discussed based on the crack propagation observed by the digital image correlation (DIC) method.