• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.16 no.3 s.81
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• pp.391-396
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• 2004

Plastic shrinkage crack occurs at the exposed surfaces of freshly placed concrete due to consolidation of the concrete mass and rapid evaporation of water from the surface. This so-called shrinkage crack is a major concern for concrete, especially for flat structures such as pavements, slabs for industrial factories and retaining walls. This study has been performed to obtain the plastic shrinkage and the permeability of hydrophilic poly vinyl alcohol(PVA) fiber reinforced mortar and concrete. Test results indicated that PVA fiber reinforced cement composite showed an ability to reduce the total crack area and the maximum crack width (as compared to plain and polypropylene fiber reinforced concrete). Also, according to the permeability test result, it was found that PVA fiber reinforced cement composite was more reducing than polypropylene fiber reinforced cement composite.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.102-112
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• 2019

This paper studies impact fracture behavior under temperature variation and compressive flexural strength of cement composites using VAE(vinyl acetate ethylene) powder polymer and PVA(polyvinyl alcohol) fiber. Impact test were conducted in the temperature range selected for the $-35^{\circ}C$, $0^{\circ}C$ and $35^{\circ}C$. In this experimental study, impact test were carried out using a drop impact testing machine (Ceast 9350) to obtain such as displacement, time, and impact fracture energy of normal specimen and and cement composites specimen. As test results, the use of VAE powder polymer and PVA fiber were observed to enhance the flexural strength of mortar. The compressive strength of PVA fibers reinforced cement composites was slightly decreased at 28 days, but the flexural strength was observed to increase 24.4% of normal mortar strength. As a result of the drop impact tests, PVA fiber reinforced cement composites specimens showed microcracks due to energy dispersion and crack prevention with bridge effect of the fibers, and scabbing or perforation by impact was suppressed. On the other hand, the normal mortar and VAE powder polymer cement composites specimens were carried out to the perforation and macro crack. Most of normal mortar and the cement composites subjected to impact load on specimens shows mostly local brittle failure. The impact resistant performance of the specimen with PVA fiber was greatly improved due to the increase of flexure performance.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.323-330
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• 2023

The development of an analysis model that reflects the microstructure characteristics of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) fiber-reinforced cementitious composites, which have a highly complex microstructure, enables synergy between efficient material design and real experiments. PVA fiber orientations are an important factor that influences the mechanical behavior of PVA fiber-reinforced cementitious composites. Owing to the difficulty in distinguishing the gray level value obtained from micro-CT images of PVA fibers from adjacent phases, fiber segmentation is time-consuming work. In this study, a micro-CT test with a voxel size of 0.65 ㎛³ was performed to investigate the three-dimensional distribution of fibers. To segment the fibers and generate training data, histogram, morphology, and gradient-based phase-segmentation methods were used. A U-net model was proposed to segment fibers from micro-CT images of PVA fiber-reinforced cementitious composites. Data augmentation was applied to increase the accuracy of the training, using a total of 1024 images as training data. The performance of the model was evaluated using accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 score. The trained model achieved a high fiber segmentation performance and efficiency, and the approach can be applied to other specimens as well.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.457-464
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• 2009

Fiber is an important ingredient in fiber-reinforced cement composite (FRCC) which can control fracture of cement composite by bridging action. In compliance with the action of the fiber and the aggregate size, it also showed a different failure mechanism. For practical application, it is needed to investigate the fracture behavior of the FRCC and to understand the micro-mechanism of cement matrix with reinforcing fiber. In order to evaluate a characteristics of fracture process in the FRCC, acoustic emission (AE) technique was used for the analysis and evaluation of FRCC damage by acoustic emission under flexural and cyclic compressive loadings. The AE signals were monitored by AMSY4 AE instrument during the entire loading period. The specimens are reinforced with 0, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0% (by volume) Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) fiber. The test results showed that the damage progress of the FRCC was characteristic for the fiber replacement ratio. As a result of analyzing the felicity ratio (FR) values, it is shown that this values can be used for evaluating the degree of FRCC damage. On the whole the felicity ratio values of FRCC are shown between 0.4 and 1.1. And, the AE kaiser effect was shown in the all FRCC specimen. In addition, the damage behavior and the microscopic fracture process of the FRCC are evaluated using the AE parameters, such as calm ratio, b-value and felicity ratio. The purpose of this reserch was to advance the state of knowledge regarding the applicability of acoustic emission as an evaluation method for FRCC.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.149-157
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• 2017

As the amount of construction wastes increase, reuse of recycled materials is being considered in research areas. While there are many experimental investigations focusing on development of mortar and concrete using the recycled materials, the studies regarding the fiber-reinforced cement composites (FRCCs) using recycled materials are still limited. In this paper, an experimental attempt has been made to investigate the effect of recycled fine aggregates and fly ash on the mechanical properties of PVA FRCCs. The cement and natural sand were respectively replaced by fly ash and recycled fine aggregates at two content levels, 25% and 50%. Ten types of PVA FRCCs mixes were fabricated and tested to investigate the flexural, compressive and direct tensile behaviors. The test results show that flexural, compressive and direct tensile strength were decreased with increase in fly ash content at all ages. In particular, flexural, compressive and direct tensile strengths of specimens, containing 50% recycled fine aggregates and 50% fly ash, showed the lowest values. The modulus of elasticity of specimens showed similar trend to the 28-day compressive strength. Poisson's ratio was increased with increase in fly ash and recycled fine aggregates content.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.92-100
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• 2015

The aim of this study is to evaluate the fracture characteristics of ductile fiber reinforced cement based composites with 1.5 volume ratio of polyvinyl alcohol and steel fiber by high velocity impact of steel projectile. We used gunpowder impact facility to evaluate the fracture characteristics of ductile fiber reinforced cement based composites by collision of steel projectile, and the impact velocity was from about 150 to 1,000m/s. The results of evaluation on the fracture characteristics of ductile fiber reinforced cement based composites were penetration grade, which is the kinetic energy more than three times of no-fiber reinforced specimen (Plain). In addition, ductile fiber reinforced cement based composites did not occurred critical damage other than the debris. In the case of mass loss, Plain specimen was proportional to kinetic energy of steel projectile, while ductile fiber reinforced cement based composites was not significantly affected by kinetic energy of steel projectile. In particular, this tendency had a close relationship with the fracture characteristics of back side of specimens, and the scabbing inhibiting efficiency of PVA specimen was higher than S specimen. In the results of verifying relationship between front and back side calculated by local damage, scabbing occurred at the region close to the back side in the ductile fiber reinforced cement based composites unlike Plain specimen. Thus, in this study, we examined principal fracture behaviors of ductile fiber reinforced cement based composites under collision of steel projectile, and verified that impact resistance performance was improved as compared to Plain specimen.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.589-597
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• 2009

High Performance Fiber-reinforced Cement Composite (HPFRCC) shows the multiple crack and damage tolerance capacity due to the interfacial bonding of the fibers to the cement matrix. For practical application, it is needed to investigate the fractural behavior of HPFRCC and understand the micro-mechanism of cement matrix with reinforcing fiber. This study is devoted to the investigation of the AE signals in HPFRCC under monotonic and cyclic uniaxial compressive loading, and total four series were tested. The major experimental parameters include the type and volume fraction of fiber (PE, PVA, SC), the hybrid type and loading pattern. The test results showed that the damage progress by compressive behavior of the HPFRCC is a characteristic for the hybrid fiber type and volume fraction. It is found from acoustic emission (AE) parameter value, that the second and third compressive load cycles resulted in successive decrease of the amplitude as compared with the first compressive load cycle. Also, the AE Kaiser effect existed in HPFRCC specimens up to 80% of its ultimate strength. These observations suggested that the AE Kaiser effect has good potential to be used as a new tool to monitor the loading history of HPFRCC.

• Composites Research
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.35-43
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• 2010

The purpose of this paper is to develop a Hybrid Fiber-reinforced High Strength Lightweight Cementitious Composite (HFSLCC) incorporated with lightweight filler and hybrid fibers for lightness and high ductility. Optimal ingredients and mixture proportion were determined on the basis of the micromechanical analysis and the steady-state cracking theory considering the fracture characteristics of matrix and the interfacial properties between fibers and matrix. Then 4 mixture proportions were determined according to the type and amount of fibers and the experiment was performed to evaluate the mechanical performance of those. The HFSLCC showed 3% of tensile strain, 4.2MPa of ultimate tensile stress, 57MPa of compressive strength and $1,660kg/m^3$ of bulk density. The mechanical performance of HFSLCC incorporated with PVA fibers of 1.0 Vol.% and PE fibers of 0.5 Vol.% is similar to those of the HFSLCC incorporated with fibers of 2.0 Vol.%.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.705-712
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• 2009

HPFRCCs (high-performance fiber reinforced cementitious composites), which is relatively more ductile and has the characteristic of high toughness with high fiber volume fractions, can be used in structures subjected to extreme loads and exposed to durability problems. In the case of PVA (polyvinyl alcohol) fiber, it is noted by former studies that around 2% fiber volume fractions contributes to the most effective performance at HPFRCCs. In this study, flexural tests were carried out to evaluate the flexural behavior of HPFRCCs and to optimize mix proportions. Two sets of hybrid fiber reinforced high performance specimens with total fiber volume fraction of 2 % were tested: the first set prepared by addition of short and long PVA fibers at different combination of fiber volume fractions, and the second set by addition of steel. In addition, in order to assess the performances of the HPFRCCs against to high strain rates, drop weight tests were conducted. Lastly, the sprayed FRP was applied on the bottom surface of specimens to compare their impact responses with non-reinforcing specimens. The experimental results showed that the specimen prepared with 1.6% short fibers (REC 15) and 0.4% long fiber (RF4000) outperformed the other specimens under flexure, and impact loading.

• Journal of the Korean Recycled Construction Resources Institute
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.130-137
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• 2023

This study analyzed the effect of mixing order on the flowability, compressive strength, and flexural strength of cement composites reinforced with polyvinyl alcohol(PVA) fibers and multi-walled carbon nanotubes(MWCNTs). The experimental results showed that the addition of CNTs significantly reduced the flowability, and the flowability was considerably affected by the mixing order when CNTs were added. The compressive strength was most effectively improved when water and CNTs solution were mixed first before adding PVA fibers, and the flexural strength was highest when water and CNTs solution were mixed with PVA fibers after dry mixing. However, there was no clear correlation between the flexural toughness and the mixing order. In addition, scanning electron microscopy(SEM) image analysis was conducted to analyze the microstructure. The SEM images showed that CNTs were randomly dispersed through the specimens and contributed to the strength improvement, but the effect of the mixing order was not clearly observed. The main results of this study are expected to be useful for evaluations of workability and material performance of PVA fiber-reinforced cement composites with CNTs.