Tailoring the orientation of fibres in high performance fibre reinforced cementitious composites: part 1 - experimental evidence, monitoring and prediction

Incorporating fibres into cementitious composites with adapted rheology can lead, thanks to the elimination of vibration and to the rheological stability of the matrix, to a randomly uniform dispersion of fibres within structural elements. Moreover, through a suitably balanced performance of the fluid mixture, fibres can be effectively aligned along the casting-flow direction. This highlights the need, in promoting high end engineering applications of fibre reinforced cementitious composites, of designing not only the material for the performance required by the intended structural application but also the casting process which allows to obtain, e.g., the required, or most suitable, alignment of fibres, e.g., as close as possible with the direction of principal tensile stresses within the element when in service. These companion papers will review the major research results by the author with reference to the topic described above.