Development of engineered cementitious composites made with dune sand

In the last few decades, different studies have been conducted to develop high-performance fibre reinforced cementitious composites (HPFRCCs) exhibiting very high tensile strain. This type of material is designed based on micromechanics principles and is different from conventional concrete as it contains only very fine sand, usually silica sand with maximum aggregate size about 250μm. However, other types and sizes of aggregates have been successfully used to produce HPFRCCs. This study aims to develop ECC, which is a class of HPFRCCs, produced with a replacement of silica sand with dune sand at 0, 50 and 100% by weight. The presence of dune sand was seen to improve the strength of ECC by up to 50% at both early and later ages. The tensile strain at early age also was seen to improve in comparison to the control mix