Tensile performance and impact resistance of Strain Hardening Cementitious Composites (SHCC) with recycled fibers

•SHCC reinforced by PET fibers showed poorer tensile performance than SHCC with PVA fibers.•In the modified Charpy impact test, PET-SHCC dissipated a similar amount of energy as PVA-SHCC.•Both modeling and tests show that a stronger interfacial bond doesn’t always lead to a higher impact energy absorption. Strain Hardening Cementitious Composites (SHCC) are fiber reinforced composites exhibiting strain hardening and multiple cracking behaviors. The Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA) fibers used in SHCC are expensive for normal civil engineering applications, so one kind of Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) fibers recycled from waste plastics are used in this study as a substitute of PVA fibers. Uniaxial tensile test was carried out on SHCC samples made with PVA or PET fibers where the PET-SHCC was found to behave poorer than the PVA-SHCC due to the weaker bond between PET fibers and matrix. Nevertheless, in the modified Charpy impact test which was designed to evaluate the impact energy absorption ability of SHCC, the PET-SHCC dissipated a great amount of energy comparable to that by PVA-SHCC, indicating that PET fibers can provide excellent impact resistance to cementitious composites. To reveal the mechanism of impact energy absorption, a physical model was developed to simulate the impact test, which can well support the experimental observations. Based on above findings, a hybrid mix of 1 vol% PVA fibers and 1 vol% PET fibers is recommended for practical applications to provide adequate tensile performance and excellent impact resistance with eco-friendly ingredients at low cost.