Analytical study on material properties of fibre reinforced cementitious composites

In this paper, a new micromechanical analytical model is developed to model the material properties of the Fibre Reinforced Cementitious Composites (FRCCs) based on the general self-consistent method. In the developed model, a hexagonal-shaped representative volume element model with multiple micro-cracks is established based on the microstructure of the FRCC to represent the transversely isotropic material characteristics. The developed analytical model is employed to evaluate the equivalent Young’s modulus of a typical type of FRCC before and after cracking. The evaluated results are compared to those obtained from other analytical models for validation. The predicted results for the Young’s modulus from the new analytical model is consistent with that obtained from other analytical models, while the developed analytical model shows advantages in predicting the influence of fibre orientation on the Young’s modulus of the composite