Ultra High Performance Strain Hardening Cementitious Composites (UHP SHCC) is one form of fiber
reinforced composites, which has high compressive and tensile strengths along with high strain capacity
in tension with strain hardening plateau. Obviously, proper selection of strengthening/retrofitting material
plays an important role in restoring the lost capacity of the strengthened/retrofitted member. This paper
investigated experimentally the effect of internal reinforcement in the UHP SHCC specimens on the
tensile strength as well as the cracking characteristics. Seven UHP SHCC specimens with identical
dimensions of 500 x 150 x 50 mm were tested under pure axial tension. Different configurations of the
internal reinforcement were considered; namely, internal orthogonal mesh of clear spacing of 50 mm in
both directions, or smooth bars of 6 mm diameter. For both configurations, different reinforcement ratios
were considered. The experiential results showed that the internal mesh configuration enabled the
specimen to develop better crack distribution along with higher tensile capacity compared to those of
specimens having internal smooth bars configurations. In addition, increasing the internal reinforcement
ratio resulted in increase the tensile strength of the UHP SHCC as well as reduce the average crack
spacing.