Original Research

Advances in Structural Engineering

2019, Vol. 22(10) 2250–2263
Effect of matrix ductility on the Ó The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1369433219837388

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cementitious composite columns

Fang Yuan and Mengcheng Chen

Abstract
Engineered cementitious composites have the characteristics of tensile strain hardening and multiple cracking. Substituting concrete
with engineered cementitious composites can effectively avoid the cracking and durability problems induced by concrete brittleness.
In this study, four steel-reinforced columns with various matrix types and load eccentricities were tested under eccentric compres-
sion. Test results indicated that steel-reinforced engineered cementitious composite columns exhibited a larger load-carrying capacity,
higher ductility, better crack control ability, and damage tolerance, compared to reinforced concrete columns. All columns finally failed
in compression as manifested by matrix crushing. However, the failure patterns between steel-reinforced engineered cementitious
composite columns and reinforced concrete columns were extremely different. Significant concrete spalling appeared in the reinforced
concrete columns, while no sign of engineered cementitious composite spalling was observed in the steel-reinforced engineered
cementitious composite columns owing to the fiber bridging effect of engineered cementitious composite. The maximum crack width
in reinforced concrete column increases almost linearly with the applied load and reaches 2 mm at most just prior to attaining the ulti-
mate strength, while the maximum crack width in the steel-reinforced engineered cementitious composite column first increases and
thereafter remains constant at approximately 60 mm with an increasing compression load. In addition to experimental work, a finite
element model was proposed to predict the load–deformation response of the steel-reinforced engineered cementitious composite
column. The prediction results are in close agreement with the test data. Finally, parametric studies were conducted to further illus-
trate the effects of matrix ductility and load eccentricity on the load–deformation curves, strain contour, and moment–load interac-
tion curves of the columns.

Keywords
column, crack control, damage tolerance, ductility, eccentric compression, engineered cementitious composites, finite element, load-
carrying capacity

Introduction reduce the damage tolerance of these structure types

Concrete cracking owing to tensile brittleness causes
severe durability problems in reinforced concrete (RC)
structures, manifested by serious steel reinforcement
corrosion in RC structures in offshore or chemical
treatment environments. Replacing the steel reinforce-
ment with noncorroding fiber-reinforced polymer
(FRP) can potentially solve the corrosion problem.
However, the extensive use of FRP reinforcement is
limited owing to the two inherent drawbacks of FRP
materials, namely, the low elasticity modulus and the
lack of ductility (Vijay and GangaRao, 2001). In RC
structures, concrete brittleness also causes other major
problems in terms of concrete spalling, bond splitting,
and loss of composite action between the steel reinfor-
cement and concrete, which weaken the ductility and
(Fischer and Li, 2002a, 2002b).
Over the past several decades, a type of high-
performance fiber-reinforced cementitious composite,
known as engineered cementitious composites (ECCs)
with tensile strain hardening behavior and multiple
Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture, East China Jiaotong
University, Nanchang, China
Corresponding authors:
Fang Yuan, Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture, East China
Jiaotong University, Nanchang 330013, China.
Email: fyuan@ecjtu.edu.cn
Mengcheng Chen, Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture,
East China Jiaotong University, Nanchang 330013, China.
Email: mcchen@ecjtu.edu.cn
Yuan and Chen
cracking properties has been developed and applied in
infrastructure engineering (Kim et al., 2004; Lepech
and Li, 2009, 2010; Li, 2003; Li and Kanda, 1998; Li
and Leung, 1992). ECC and concrete exhibit similar
ranges of tensile strength (4–6 MPa) and compressive
strength (30–80 MPa) but deform in a totally different
manner under tension. Conventional concrete fails in a
brittle manner once the first crack occurs. However, in
an ECC member, after the first cracking, the stress still
increase with increasing deformation until final crack
localization occurs, accompanied by multiple cracks
along the tested member. Typically, mechanical soften-
ing only begins at a tensile strain of 3%–5%, with a
crack spacing of 3–6 mm, and a crack width of approx-
imately 60 mm (Zhang et al., 2011). In uniaxial com-
pression, the ECC strain at the peak stress is nearly
twice that of concrete (Kesner et al., 2003; Zhou et al.,
2014). Existing research results indicate that the
mechanical properties of ECC material in shear are
similar to those in tension (Kanda et al., 1998). FRP-
reinforced ECC beams without transverse steel reinfor-
cement demonstrate superior mechanical performance
to concrete beams with closely spaced stirrups, thus
indicating that the elimination of shear reinforcement
is feasible when concrete is replaced with ECC (Li and
Wang, 2002). A previous study also indicated that
ECC deforms in a compatible manner with steel rein-
forcement, thereby resulting in decreased interfacial
bond stresses and in the elimination of bond splitting
cracks and cover splitting (Fischer and Li, 2002a).
Maalej and Li (1995) pointed out that steel-reinforced
ECC-concrete composite beams with an ECC layer on
the tension side exhibited higher flexural strength and
finer cracks prior to their final failure than correspond-
ing RC beams. Recently, Chen et al. (2018) proposed
the use of high-strength ECC for the flexural repair of
RC structures with significant steel corrosion. With
this novel technique, the flexural strength of the corro-
sive beam was retrieved, and the splicing of additional
reinforcements or the removal of a large amount of
concrete could be avoided. Experimental observations
of the cyclic response of steel-reinforced ECC (R/ECC)
flexural members also demonstrated that the energy
dissipation capacity can be improved significantly and
member integrity can be better maintained when con-
crete is replaced with ECC (Canbolat et al., 2005;
Fischer and Li, 2002b; Yuan et al., 2013). Obviously,
ECC can operate in conjunction with steel reinforce-
ment to improve ductility and durability for R/ECC
flexural members, owing to their unique properties.
Previous studies have focused on the flexural beha-
vior of R/ECC members, but few experimental studies
have investigated the eccentric compression behavior
of R/ECC members. This gives rise to the need for the
conduct of additional studies on this issue.
2251
In this study, several R/ECC columns are tested
under eccentric compression. The influence of matrix
types and load eccentricities on the column’s ultimate
strength, ductility, and damage tolerance—among
other factors—are evaluated. Subsequently, a finite
element model is proposed to predict the load versus
deformation response of the R/ECC column. Finally,
an extensive parametric study was conducted to fur-
ther evaluate the effect of matrix ductility on the ulti-
mate strength of R/ECC members.
Experimental program
Specimen preparation
Four steel-reinforced columns were tested under com-
pression in this work. All columns have the same
cross-sections of breadth (b) 3 depth (d) = 200 mm
3 250 mm, and lengths (L) of 1200 mm. The column
specimens in this experiment can be divided into two
series. Series I consists of two columns tested under a
load eccentricity of 40 mm, designed to fail in matrix
crushing without reinforcement yield in tension. Series
II includes two columns tested under a load eccentri-
city of 120 mm, designed to fail in matrix crushing
beyond reinforcement yield in tension. The corre-
sponding load–eccentricity ratios (e0/r) in Series I and
II are 0.32 and 0.96, respectively, where r is given by d/
2. Each series includes one RC column and one R/
ECC column. For each specimen, four steel bars with
the same diameters of 16 mm were used as longitudinal
reinforcements. For all specimens, ribbed steel stirrups
with diameters of 8 mm and a spacing of 100 mm were
used as transverse reinforcements. Table 1 provides the
details of each specimen. Different specimen designa-
tions are employed to distinguish these columns.
Specimen designations starting with the letter ‘‘E’’
denote ECC specimens, while those starting with the
letter ‘‘C’’ represent concrete specimens. The Arabic
numerals following the first hyphen indicate the longi-
tudinal reinforcement diameter. The listed Arabic
numerals following the second hyphen are used to dis-
tinguish specimens with different load eccentricities.
For example, the specimen ‘‘E–16–120’’ represents an
R/ECC column with a longitudinal reinforcement dia-
meter of 16 mm and a load eccentricity of 120 mm.
Material properties
An increased replacement volume (80%) of cement
with fly ash was employed in the ECC composition in
order to improve the environmental sustainability. The
matrix compositions of the ECC and concrete are dis-
played in Table 2. The fiber is made of polyvinyl alco-
hol (PVA) fiber. The specific performance indexes of
2252 Advances in Structural Engineering 22(10)

Table 1. Summary of specimen information.

Series Specimen ID e0 e0/r Longitudinal Shear Matrix fcu Peak load Deflection at
(mm) reinforcement reinforcement type (MPa) (kN) peak load (mm)
(mm) (mm)

I C–16–40 40 0.32 4f16 f8@100 Concrete 32.28 1040 4.08

E–16–40 40 0.32 4f16 f8@100 ECC 46.08 1410 3.69
II C–16–120 120 0.96 4f16 f8@100 Concrete 32.28 560 5.68
E–16–120 120 0.96 4f20 f8@100 ECC 46.08 738 5.68

ECC: engineered cementitious composite.

Table 2. Mixture proportions.

Matrix Cement Fly ash Sand Coarse Water High-range PVA fiber volume
designation aggregate water-reducing fraction, %
admixture, %

ECC 0.2 0.8 0.2 – 0.22 0.8 2.0

Concrete 1.0 – 1.5 2.5 0.35 0.3 –

ECC: engineered cementitious composite; PVA: polyvinyl alcohol.

Table 3. Specific performance indexes of PVA fiber.

Length (mm) Diameter (mm) Tensile strength (MPa) Elongation (%) Elastic modulus (GPa) Density (g/cm3)

12 39 1620 7 42.8 1.3

PVA fiber are shown in Table 3. The volume of the

fiber is 2%, and the fiber number per square meter is
about 1.40 3 109. To evaluate the ECC tensile ducti-
lity, tensile tests were carried out on specimens with
dimensions of 350 mm 3 50 mm 3 15 mm. A typi-
cal ECC tensile stress–strain curve is illustrated in
Figure 1. It was found that the tensile strength
exceeded 5 MPa and the ultimate tensile strain
approached 4%. A number of ECC and concrete
cubes with dimensions of 100 mm 3 100 mm 3 100
mm were also prepared and tested in axial compres-
sion at the same time as the column tests. The mea-
sured cube strengths (fcu) of the ECC and concrete
were 46.08 and 32.28 MPa, respectively. The mechani-
cal properties of the steel reinforcement are shown in
Table 4.

Loading configuration Figure 1. Typical tensile stress–strain relationship of ECC.

The specimens were tested under compression at dif-
ferent load eccentricities. The compression load was
applied by a testing machine with a 5000 kN capacity.
Plate hinges were arranged at both ends of the speci-
men, and steel caps were installed at both ends of each
specimen prior to loading. Grooves with depths of
6 mm were machined on each steel cap so that the load
eccentricity could be controlled precisely. The load
was applied through V-shaped edges connected to the
corresponding groove of each specimen. Three
Yuan and Chen 2253

Table 4. Material properties of steel reinforcement. data were collected automatically by a data logger dur-
ing the tests.
Diameter Yield Ultimate Elasticity
(mm) strength strength modulus
fy (MPa) fsu (MPa) Es (GPa) Test results and discussions
8 359 525 195 Failure characteristics and crack patterns
12 534 620 203
16 527 621 201 Figure 3 illustrates the specimen failure modes. Matrix
20 506 607 211 crushing was observed for all tested specimens and
local crushing of the ECC or concrete occurred near
the top ends for most specimens owing to the effects of
the end conditions. All columns finally failed in matrix
displacement transducers were arranged uniformly
crushing, but the failure patterns of the R/ECC col-
along the specimens to monitor the column deflec-
umns were extremely different from those of the RC
tions. Two displacement transducers were installed at
columns. Significant concrete spalling occurred in the
the specimen end to measure longitudinal shortening
RC columns, while no sign of ECC spalling was
during the tests. Numerous strain gauges were observed in the R/ECC columns because of the ECC
attached to the longitudinal tensile bars at an equidi- fiber bridging effect. This means that the ECC can
stant spacing of 100 mm and on the concrete surface provide more efficient confinement to the longitudinal
at mid-height at a spacing of 50 mm (Figure 2). The reinforcement compared to concrete. As a result, steel
test setup and measurement configurations are dis- buckling can be delayed and the damage tolerance of
played in Figure 2. A graded loading program was the members can be improved.
adopted for the test, and a load interval equal to one- Figure 4 illustrates the crack patterns for all tested
fifteenth of the estimated load capacity was employed specimens. For specimens with a load eccentricity of
until the peak load was reached. Each load interval 40 mm, the cracks initially occurred at approximately
was maintained for approximately 2 min. The loading 30% of the maximum load. In contrast, initial cracks
was applied slowly and continually following the peak were observed at approximately 15% of the peak load
load, until final failure occurred. All of the measured for specimens with a load eccentricity of 120 mm.

Figure 2. Details of test columns and setup (units: mm): (a) specimen dimensions and (b) measurement arrangement.
2254
Figure 3. Failure modes for each specimen: (a) C–16–40, (b) E–16–40, (c) C–16–120, and (d) E–16–120.
Figure 4. Final crack patterns of tested specimens.
With a larger load eccentricity, the applied moment
becomes larger and the matrix cracking strength is
thus more likely to be reached. The flexural cracks ini-
tially appeared on the side far from the loading point
and extended toward the opposite side at increasing
loads. Crack localization occurred beyond the peak
load for the R/ECC columns with a load eccentricity
of 120 mm, while it was not observed for ECC col-
umns with a load eccentricity of 40 mm during the
entire loading process. It was also found from the test
observations that at the ultimate stage, dozens of tiny
Advances in Structural Engineering 22(10)
Figure 5. Maximum crack width versus mid-height deflection
curves prior to peak load.
cracks with a small crack spacing and width were
observed along the column span for the R/ECC speci-
men, while only less than 10 evident flexural cracks
with a large crack width were found in the case of the
RC specimens. The results indicate that substitution of
concrete with ECC in the column can significantly
diminish the crack width, resulting in improved dur-
ability of the member if repairs cannot be carried out
immediately following a severe accidental event.
Figure 5 illustrates the maximum crack width versus
mid-height deflection (f) curves of specimens prior to
the peak strength. For the RC column, the crack width
increased almost linearly with the applied load and
reached a value of 2 mm at most at peak load. For the
R/ECC column, the crack width first increased and
then remained constant at approximately 60 mm with
increases in the applied load. The significant difference
in the development of the crack width was derived
Yuan and Chen
Figure 6. Load versus mid-height deflection curves for
specimens with different load eccentricities.
from the different cracking processes of the concrete and
ECC. A tension-softening process occurred in conven-
tional concrete once its tensile strength was obtained,
followed by a rapid increase in crack width. However, in
ECC materials, following initial cracking, the tensile
load continued to increase with strain hardening beha-
vior, accompanied by the formation of multiple cracks.
Each individual crack tended to open steadily up to a
certain crack width, and the increasing deformation
resulted in the formation of an additional crack. Based
on the same cracking mechanism, ECC member crack-
ing can reach a saturated state with small crack spacing,
until the localization of a random single crack occurs.
Load versus deformation curves
Figure 6 illustrates the compression load (N) versus
the mid-height deflection (f) curves of the specimens. It
Figure 7. Strain distributions along tensile longitudinal reinforcement: (a) C–16–120 and (b) E–16–120.
2255
can be observed that the deflections increase rapidly at
increasing loads prior to the peak load (Nu). As
expected, the flexural stiffness decreased when the load
eccentricity increased. Subsequently, the compression
load decreased at increased deflections owing to crush-
ing of the concrete or ECC. The decreasing trend was
more pronounced for the RC columns than the R/
ECC columns. This is a result of the fact that the ECC
strain at the ultimate compressive strength is nearly
twice as high as that of concrete (Kesner et al., 2003;
Zhou et al., 2014), which benefits the ductility of flex-
ural members that fail in matrix crushing. It can also
be observed from Figure 6 that the ultimate strengths
of the R/ECC columns are higher than the corre-
sponding RC columns. Compared with the RC speci-
mens, the ultimate strength of the R/ECC specimens
increased by 35.6% when the load eccentricity was
40 mm and by 31.8% when the load eccentricity was
120 mm. Owing to the higher measured compressive
strength of the ECC, it is difficult to determine
whether there are other attributing factors apart from
the higher compressive strength of the matrix that lead
to the higher ultimate strength of the R/ECC columns.
This will be discussed in detail in the following section
on numerical simulations.
Strain analysis
Figure 7 illustrates the strain distributions along the
tensile longitudinal reinforcement at different load lev-
els prior to Nu for specimens C–16–120 and E–16–120
of series II. The longitudinal reinforcement rebar strain
fluctuation in the R/ECC column was less pronounced
than that in the corresponding RC column. For C–16–
120, once cracking occurred, the tensile force at the
cracked section was almost entirely maintained by the
steel reinforcement, thus leading to strain fluctuations
along the longitudinal reinforcement. In contrast, for
2256
(a)
(a)
Figure 8. Stress–strain relationships of (a) ECC under uniaxial tension, (b) ECC under uniaxial compression, (c) steel
reinforcement, and (d) concrete.
E–16–120, ECC still provided a tensile load at the
cracked section through the stress transfer of the PVA
fiber, thus resulting in a highly uniform distribution of
the longitudinal reinforcement strain. At the same load
value, the strains along the longitudinal reinforcement
in the RC column were also significantly higher than
those in the R/ECC column. For example, the maxi-
mum strains of the longitudinal reinforcement for C–
16–120 at 0.54 Nu and 0.88 Nu were 1190 and 2149 me,
respectively, compared to 704 me for E–16–120 at the
same load levels. These special characteristics of the R/
ECC column lead to a significant reduction in the inter-
facial bond stresses that subsequently benefits its
eccentric compression response.
Finite element implementation
Stress–strain relationship
Numerical simulations of this study were carried out
using the nonlinear finite element software ATENA. It
was developed by Czech Cervenka Consulting
Company and is mainly used to solve RC structure
problems. Compared to other finite element analysis
Advances in Structural Engineering 22(10)
(b)
(b)
software which cannot effectively define the perfor-
mance of ECC materials, ATENA can easily give the
performance definition of ECC materials. In addition,
the software has its own unique ‘‘professional’’ in
simulating concrete cracking, failure, and yielding of
steel bars. The typical stress–strain curves of ECC
obtained from uniaxial tension and compression tests
are shown as dotted lines in Figure 8 (Yuan et al.,
2017; Zhou et al., 2014). To simplify numerical model-
ing, the following assumptions were made for the con-
stitutive relationships of materials: (1) the stress–strain
relationship of ECC in tension and compression can
be, respectively, described by a bilinear (Figure 8(a))
and a polyline curve (Figure 8(b)), (2) the steel reinfor-
cement is described by a bilinear curve with strain
hardening (Figure 8(c)), (3) for concrete in tension, the
stress increases linearly with strain up to the first
cracking followed by a linear descending part pointing
to the zero stress point (Figure 8(d)), and (4) for con-
crete in compression, the stress–strain relationship pro-
posed by Hognestad et al. (1955) was adopted to
model the ascending part followed by a linear descend-
ing part pointing toward the zero stress point, as indi-
cated in Figure 8(d).
Yuan and Chen
(a)
(c)
Figure 9. Comparison of the predicted load versus mid-height deflection curves with measured results for specimens: (a) C–16–
40, (b) E–16–40, (c) C–16–120, and (d) E–16–120.
Three-dimensional finite element models were
adopted to simulate the specimens in the experiments.
In this analysis, the mesh size was selected to be 20 mm
according to the convergence study. The brick solid ele-
ments were used for concrete and ECC. The truss ele-
ments were adopted for the steel reinforcement. The
spring elements were used to consider the bond beha-
vior between the steel bars and the matrix (concrete or
ECC). The bond-slip model proposed by Wu and Zhao
(2012) was employed to model the steel–concrete inter-
face, while the model proposed by Bandelt and
Billington (2016) was used to model the steel–ECC
interface. The columns were loaded by displacement
control during the entire loading process. The
‘‘Newton–Raphson’’ iterative procedure was selected as
the solution method. Both displacement and residual
convergence criteria were adopted in the computation
and the error tolerance was set to be 0.005.
Verification of finite element model
To verify the validity of the proposed model, the tested
columns were selected for analysis. The material
2257
(b)
(d)
property parameters were the same as those described
in section ‘‘Experimental program.’’Figure 9 shows the
comparison of the predicted moment versus the deflec-
tion curves at the mid-height section with the mea-
sured results. The total moment at the mid-height
section is the sum of bending moments caused by the
initial eccentricity and lateral deflection, expressed by
M m = N ðe0 + f Þ ð1Þ
It can be observed that the simulated initial stiffness
almost coincides with the measured stiffness for each
specimen. The predicted ultimate strengths were
slightly smaller than the corresponding measured val-
ues, while the predicted deflections at the ultimate
strengths were slightly larger than the measured deflec-
tions. The values of the experimental and numerical
peak loads are given and compared quantitatively in
Table 5. The average ratio of the predicted to the mea-
sured ultimate moment was 0.97, and the average ratio
of the predicted to the measured deflection at peak
strength was 1.08. The larger simulated deflection was
attributed to the fact that the numerical simulation is
an ideal condition where the maximum deflection and
2258 Advances in Structural Engineering 22(10)

Table 5. Proposed material parameters of concrete and ECC in numerical simulations.

Specimen ID Measured ultimate Predicted ultimate Measured ultimate Predicted ultimate

compression load (kN) compression load (kN) moment (kN m) moment (kN m)

C–16–40 1040.0 1020.9 45.84 44.72

E–16–40 1410.0 1481.4 61.60 60.18
C–16–120 560.0 540.3 70.38 68.43
E–16–120 738.0 721.9 92.75 90.95

Table 6. Proposed material parameters of concrete and ECC in numerical simulations.

Concrete Compressive Compressive strain Tensile strength ft Cracking strain etc# Ultimate strain ecu#
strength fc at peak stress ec0#

230 MPa 20.002 3.5 0.00015 20.006

ECC Cracking strain etc Cracking stress stc Peak stress st0/sc0 Strain at peak stress et0/ec0 Ultimate strain etu/ecu

0.00021 3 MPa 4.5 MPa/–30 MPa 0.03/–0.004 0.045/–0.012

the most severe damage occur at the mid-height sec-

tion. By contrast, the measured maximum deflection
section may deviate from the mid-height section owing
to the geometric imperfections or loading location
errors, which results in a smaller mid-height deflection.
After the peak load point, the simulated curves deviate
from the measured curves to some extent. Increased
nonlinearity in terms of steel bar buckling and con-
crete crushing occurred in the softening stage, which
explains the simulating difficulty in this stage. In gen-
eral, a reasonable agreement is observed between the
test and numerical results.

Parametric studies
A parametric study was conducted in order to gain a
comprehensive understanding of the eccentric com-
pression behavior of R/ECC columns. The control col-
umn had a length of L = 1600 mm, a cross-section of
b 3 d = 250 mm 3 250 mm, a concrete cover
thickness of 40 mm to the longitudinal reinforcement
center, and an initial load eccentricity of 180 mm. For
the control column, four steel bars with the same dia-
meter of 16 mm were used as the longitudinal reinfor-
cement of the control column. Steel stirrups with
diameters of 10 mm and spacings of 100 mm were
used as transverse reinforcements. The proposed mate-
rial parameters of the concrete and ECC are displayed
in Table 6. The elastic modulus, yield strength, ulti-
mate strength, and ultimate strain of the steel reinfor-
cement, were assumed to equal 200 GPa, 460 MPa,
610 MPa, and 0.1, respectively.
Figure 10. Comparison of moment–deflection responses
between RC and R/ECC columns at a load eccentricity of
180 mm.
Load versus deformation analysis
Figure 10 shows the comparison of the mid-height sec-
tional moment–deflection curves of the RC and the R/
ECC columns. It is observed that the moment capacity
of the R/ECC column is significantly larger than that
of the RC column with the same geometric dimension
and reinforcement layout. The peak moment of the R/
ECC column is 95.68 kN m, which is 1.38 times that of
the RC column (69.55 kN m). The larger load-carrying
capacity of the R/ECC column is mainly owing to the
ultra-high-tensile ductility characteristic of the ECC
Yuan and Chen
Figure 11. Overall deformations and strain contours of RC and R/ECC columns at peak load: (a) principle tensile strain and (b)
principle compressive strain (deformation magnified 10 times).
material. Because the ultimate tensile strain of the ECC
material can be as high as 3%, the ECC in the tension
zone is typically in the tensile strain hardening stage at
the peak load and can still contribute to the tensile
stress resultant. However, concrete has already cracked
before the peak load is reached and the tensile capacity
of concrete is almost negligible. The participation of
ECC in the tensile stress resultant is equivalent to the
increase in the longitudinal reinforcement ratio of the
column members. The higher the reinforcement ratio
is, the larger the bending moment capacity is. The mid-
height deflection at the peak load of the R/ECC col-
umn is approximately 1.64 times that of the RC col-
umn, as shown in Figure 10. The ultimate strain of
ECC is much greater than that of concrete. As a result,
the R/ECC column exhibits superior deformability
than the RC column when they fail by matrix crushing.
It is also worth mentioning that the initial stiffness of
the R/ECC column is very close to that of the RC col-
umn although the ECC elastic modulus is only half to
two-fifth of that of concrete. This is mainly owing to
the excellent tensile ductility of ECC, which ensures
that ECC always contributes to the tensile force of the
R/ECC column.
Strain contour analysis
Figure 11 shows the overall deformation and strain
contours of RC and R/ECC columns at peak load.
The deformations of the columns are magnified 10
times. The loading line at the upper plate coincides
with the constraint line at the lower plate at the verti-
cal projection, thus resulting in the occurrence of the
maximum lateral deformation at the mid-height
2259
section. It can be observed from Figure 11(a) that at
peak load, the maximum tensile strain of concrete and
ECC are 3.472 3 1023 and 4.373 3 1023, respec-
tively. The assumed strains at the peak stress of concrete
and ECC are 0.00015 and 0.03, respectively. This indi-
cates that cracks appear on the tensile side of the RC
column at peak load, and the tension contribution of
concrete is negligible. However, the extreme tensile
strain of R/ECC column is far from reaching the locali-
zation strain of ECC, and ECC can thus provide stable
tensile force that ultimately has a positive effect on the
load-carrying capacity of the R/ECC column. Figure
11(b) shows the principle compressive strains of the RC
and R/ECC columns at peak load. The maximum prin-
ciple compressive strains of concrete and ECC are
21.693 3 1023 and 23.615 3 1023, respectively. The
maximum principal compressive strain of ECC in the R/
ECC column at peak load is more than two times that
of concrete in the RC column, thus resulting in signifi-
cantly larger mid-height deflection of the R/ECC col-
umn compared to that of the RC column.
Figure 12 shows the overall deformation and strain
contour of RC and R/ECC columns at the ultimate state.
Herein, the ultimate state is defined as the point where
the applied load drops to 85% of the load-carrying capac-
ity. It can be found from Figure 12(a) that the maximum
principal tensile strains of concrete and ECC at the ulti-
mate state are 2.090 3 1022 and 3.121 3 1022, respec-
tively, indicating that both the concrete and ECC at
extreme tensile faces enter the tensile softening stage.
However, the ECC close to the neutral axis still provides
tensile resistance. It can be observed from Figure 12(b)
that the maximum principal compressive strains of con-
crete and ECC at the ultimate state are 21.146 3 1022
2260 Advances in Structural Engineering 22(10)

Figure 12. Overall deformations and strain contours of RC and R/ECC columns at ultimate state: (a) principle tensile strain and (b)
principle compressive strain (deformation magnified 10 times).

Figure 13. Comparison of moment versus mid-height deflection curves between RC and R/ECC columns at various eccentricities:
(a) e0 = 45 mm, (b) e0 = 90 mm, (c) e0 = 135 mm, (d) e0 = 225 mm, (e) e0 = 270 mm and (f) e0 = 315 mm.

and 22.071 3 1022, respectively, which are evidently Effect of load eccentricities
larger than the strains of concrete and ECC at peak To study the influence of the load eccentricity (e0), a
stress. This indicates that the concrete and ECC enter the parametric study was carried out by changing the load
compression softening stage, and both the RC and R/
eccentricity e0 from 45 to 315 mm. Figure 13 shows
ECC columns fail by matrix crushing. The larger maxi-
the mid-height moment–deflection curves of the RC
mum principal compressive strain of ECC leads to larger
and R/ECC columns at each load–eccentricity level. It
mid-height curvature and thus greater deflection of the
can be observed that both of the peak moments and
R/ECC column at the ultimate state.
Yuan and Chen
Figure 14. Comparison of load versus moment interaction curves between RC and R/ECC columns: (a) columns with steel bar
diameter of 16 mm and (b) columns with steel bar diameter of 20 mm.
the corresponding deflections of the R/ECC columns
are larger than those of the RC columns. To better
analyze the ultimate strength, the compression load
capacity and moment capacity at the mid-height sec-
tion at each load–eccentricity level are shown together
in Figure 14, also known as the load–moment interac-
tion curve. It is clearly found from Figure 14(a) that
the load–moment interaction curve of the RC column
is surrounded by that of the R/ECC column, thus indi-
cating that the replacement of concrete with ECC leads
to a larger load-carrying capacity of the column mem-
ber under eccentric compression. However, the ulti-
mate strength improvement is greatly dependent on
the load–eccentricity ratio. The strength improvement
is more pronounced for columns with higher load–
eccentricity ratios. The mechanism can be explained as
follows. When the load–eccentricity ratio is low, the
bending moment to the axial force ratio is relatively
small and most of the section areas are therefore under
compression. The contribution of the ECC tensile
strength to the total load capacity is negligible. As the
load–eccentricity ratio increases, the bending moment
to axial force ratio increases, and the tension area
becomes increasingly larger. In this situation, the
ultra-high-tensile ductility of the ECC causes it to play
an important role in the resultant tensile force. It is as
if the tensile reinforcement ratio of the R/ECC column
is significantly higher than that of the RC column. It is
well known that a higher tensile reinforcement ratio
leads to a larger compression stress resultant and thus
to a higher flexural strength. That is, the R/ECC col-
umn exhibits a superior mechanical performance com-
pared to the RC column when they are subjected to
eccentric compression at an increased load–eccentricity
ratio. To further verify this observation, an additional
case with longitudinal steel bar diameter of 20 mm
was also simulated. The other parameters were kept
2261
constant. The numerical load–moment interaction
curve is shown in Figure 14(b). The same variation
trend can be observed. That is, the load-carrying
capacity of the R/ECC columns is very close to that of
the RC columns when load–eccentricity ratio is low,
while it is evidently larger than that of the RC columns
when the load–eccentricity ratio is high.
Conclusion
The eccentric compression behaviors of R/ECC col-
umns were systematically studied in this work. First,
four columns with various matrix types and load
eccentricities were tested under eccentric compression.
The failure modes, crack patterns, and load versus
deformation responses of R/ECC columns were ana-
lyzed and compared with those of RC columns.
Subsequently, a finite element model was proposed
and verified by the comparison of the simulation with
the measured results. Based on the finite element
model, a systematic parametric study was carried out
to further evaluate the effects of matrix ductility on
the strain contour distribution as well as the load–
moment interaction curves of column members. In
summary, the following conclusions can be drawn
from this study:
1. The failure modes of all columns were compres-
sion failures manifested by matrix crushing;
however, significant concrete spalling occurred
in the RC columns, while no sign of ECC spal-
ling was observed in the R/ECC columns owing
to the fiber bridging effect of ECC.
2. The maximum crack width in RC columns
increased almost linearly with the applied load
and reached values as high as 2 mm prior to
the ultimate strength, while the maximum crack
2262
width in the R/ECC column first increased and
thereafter remained constant at approximately
60 mm as a function of increasing compression
loads.
3. The deformability of R/ECC columns is super-
ior to that of RC columns at each load–
eccentricity level.
4. Replacement of concrete with ECC leads to a
larger load-carrying capacity of column mem-
bers under eccentric compression. The ultimate
strength improvement is greatly dependent on
the load–eccentricity ratio. The strength
improvement is more pronounced for columns
with higher load–eccentricity ratios.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial sup-
port for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article: The work described in this study was fully supported
by a grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of
China (Grant No.: 51608199).
ORCID iD
Fang Yuan https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8794-3671
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e strain
ec0 compressive strain of ECC at peak stress
Appendix 1 ec0# compressive strain of concrete at peak
Notation stress
ecu ultimate compressive strain of ECC
b cross-section breadth ecu# ultimate compressive strain of concrete
d cross-section depth esu ultimate strain of steel reinforcement
e0 load eccentricity etc# cracking strain of concrete
Es elastic modulus of steel reinforcement etc first cracking strain of ECC
f deflection at mid-height section etu ultimate tensile strain of ECC
fc compressive cylinder strength of concrete et0 tensile strain of concrete at peak stress
fcu compressive cube strength of concrete s stress
fsu ultimate strength of steel reinforcement sc0 compressive strength of ECC
ft tensile strength of concrete stc first cracking stress of ECC
fy yield strength of steel reinforcement st0 tensile strength of ECC
L column length
Mm moment at mid-height section
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