Eco-Friendly Brittle Matrix Composite in Direct Tension—Determination of Upper and Lower Bounds for Ultimate Loads

Ferrocement is a brittle matrix composite in which brittle cement mortar is reinforced with ductile and continuous mesh wires. Since river sand, used in the mortar, is becoming a scarce material, the granulated blast furnace slag (a by-product of steel industry) is used to replace sand in percentage of 0–100, in steps of 20%. This paper deals with the determination probabilistic bounds on ultimate load of these ferrocement elements in direct tension. Both normal and eco-friendly light weight ferrocement elements are considered. Simple upper and lower bounds are obtained first. The estimated bounds are compared with the respective experimental results. The experimental minimum loads were underestimated by a large margin by simple lower bound in most cases. Hence, refined lower bounds were determined by considering multiple wire breaks. The obtained bounds are compared with the respective experimental results and it is found that adjacent triple break theory gives lower bound estimates closer to the experimental minimum loads.