Concrete is an inherently brittle material with low tensile strength but despite this is widely used in construction. High strength concrete is even more susceptible to violent tensile failure than conventional concrete, mainly because its (slightly) higher tensile strength leads to relief of higher stored energy at failure. This paper follows the approach previously taken by us to promote toughening in conventional mortars. The toughening mechanism depends strongly on the nature of the interface between non-spherical inclusions and the continuous cement matrix. The situation is more complicated in high performance cements because the matrix is more compacted so that controlling interfacial properties is more difficult. Using pore reduced cements (PRC) as a model for high performance concrete, we investigate the important issues with regard to controlling interfacial bonding and present data to show their relative importance in the overall toughening of high performance mortars.

  • INTRODUCTION

  • MATRIX/INCLUSION BOND

  • EXPERIMENTAL METHOD

  • RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

  • CONCLUSIONS

  • REFERENCES

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