Engineered cementitious composite with characteristic of low drying shrinkage

This paper reports a new class of engineered cementitious composite (ECC) with characteristics of low drying shrinkage, tight crack opening and high tensile strain capacity. Research emphasis is placed on the influence of different cementitious matrix on drying shrinkage, tensile property and early age cracking behavior of the composites. Experimental results show that drying shrinkage of the composite is greatly reduced as using the low shrinkage cementitious material in matrix, while the composite remains strain-hardening and multiple cracking characteristics. The measured drying shrinkage strain at 28 days is only 109 × 10− 6 to 242 × 10− 6 for low shrinkage ECCs. For traditional ECC, the shrinkage strain at 28 days is nearly 1200 × 10− 6. The average tensile strain capacity after 28 days curing is 2.5% of the low shrinkage ECC with tensile strength of 4–5 MPa. Further, in the strain-hardening and multiple cracking stage, cracks with much smaller width compared to the traditional ECC are formed in the low shrinkage ECC.