Equivalent Reinforcement Layer Approach for Bending Design of TRC Members

The use of Textile Reinforced Concrete is becoming more and more important both in retrofitting of existing structures and in new constructions. This asks for reliable approaches for the design of structural members. In particular, referring to bending behavior, traditional approaches for Reinforced Concrete structures that account for a perfect bond between concrete and reinforcement cannot be adopted for these kinds of composites where the interaction between reinforcement fabric and concrete plays a key role in the global tensile response of the solution. General characterization approaches refer to the composite as a whole providing a tensile behavior that already takes into account the specific interaction between reinforcement and concrete. The present paper aims at presenting a design approach for bending behavior of these composites that propose the use of an equivalent reinforcement layer of reinforcement, whose mechanical properties are defined by tensile tests on the composite, and that is considered as embedded in the cross section under design. The paper discusses the reliability of the approach, also discussing the dimension and definition of the equivalent reinforcement layer comparing the prediction of the model with experimental results.