Fatigue Behaviour of Textile Reinforced Cementitious Composites and Their Application in Sandwich Elements

Using large lightweight insulating sandwich panels with cement composite faces offers great possibilities for the renovation of existing dwellings. During their lifetime, these panels are subjected to wind loading, which is equivalent to a repeated loading. To guarantee the structural performance of these panels during their entire lifetime, it is necessary to quantify the impact of these loading conditions on the long term. The fatigue behaviour was, therefore, examined in this paper both at the material level of the faces and at the element level as well. plain textile reinforced cementitious composite (TRC) specimens were subjected to 100,000 loading cycles by means of a uniaxial tensile test, while sandwich beams were loaded 100.000 times with a four-point bending test. Results show that the residual behaviour is strongly dependent on the occurrence of cracks. The formation of cracks leads to a reduction of the initial stiffness. The ultimate strength is only affected in a minor way by the preloading history.