Property improvements of alkali resistant glass fibres/epoxy composite with nanosilica for textile reinforced concrete applications

Highlights: • Experimental tests carried out on the tensile, compressive and shear properties of epoxy resin and alkali-resistant glass (ARG)/epoxy composites with 0, 1, 2 and 3% nanosilica loading revealed improvement in strength and ductility with silica volume fraction. • Interfacial bonding and fractured surface morphology of alkali-resistant glass/epoxy composites depended on the nanosilica concentration. • The surface hardness of epoxy resin has been improved significantly after the nanosilica loading. • An improvement of 21% in loading failure was observed via numerical simulation for the facade panels with 2% nanosilica textile. The aim of this work is to study the tensile, compressive and shear properties of textile rovings and also their matrix. This paper describes the sample preparations to obtain the tensile, compression and shear testing results for alkali resistant glass fibres (ARG)/epoxy composite. Furthermore, the effect of nanosilica particles on the mechanical properties of ARG/epoxy composite was studied. The results obtained for the rovings with nanosilica showed mechanical improvements for all tested properties. A numerical model was developed with the new obtained textile properties for a TRC facade panel to investigate the flexural behaviour.