In the 60ties engineers started to combine short glass fibers with a concrete matrix. Today engineers combine endless fibers with the concrete matrix. Hence, the so called textile-reinforced concrete offers more and more opportunities to manufacture consumer goods like desks or chairs and to build face elements for houses and even load-bearing structures. This revolution is only feasible because a lot of research work has been done - into textile, into concrete, into the combination and the bonding. One big challenge still is to have a high bond between the fibers and the concrete to achieve high tensile strength. At the same time the reinforcement should be flexible to open a wide range of applications. The Institut für Textiltechnik and the Welding and Joining Institute of the RWTH Aachen University have spotted an innovative coating technology to achieve both – high tensile strength and drapability for textile-reinforcements for concrete applications.
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Glowania et al. (2011) studied this question.