Impact resistance of poly(vinyl alcohol) fiber reinforced high-performance organic aggregate cementitious material

Poly(vinyl butyral) (PVB) which has many special engineering aggregate properties such as super lightweight, physical toughness, adhesion to a variety of surfaces and energy-absorbing characteristics is utilized as the sole aggregate in this study to develop a novel cementitious composite reinforced with Poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) fiber. Impact energy absorption capacity is evaluated based on the Charpy impact test. The results show that PVB composite material has lower density but higher impact energy absorption capability compared with conventional lightweight concrete and regular concrete. The addition of PVA fiber improves the impact resistance with fiber volume fractions. The remarkable change in the interfacial bond strength contributed by the non-covalent bond such as hydrogen bond and ether interactions at the interfaces between fiber, aggregate and matrix contributes to the improvement of the impact resistant capacity. A model based on fiber bridging mechanics and the rule of mixtures is developed to characterize the impact energy. A good correlation was obtained for the materials tested when experimental results are compared to those predicted by the developed model.