EFFECT OF STEEL FIBRES

ON CONCRETE
BEHAVIOUR
Presented by:

Faizan
Ashique
CE112/15-16
.

Contents
Why SFRC
What is SFRC
Fibre Bridging
Mechanical Behavior of SFRC
Structural Applications of SFRC
Conclusion

Why Steel Fibres in Concrete???

Concrete is
Good in compression but weak in tension and low strain
capacity
Characterized by brittle failure, the nearly complete loss
of loading capacity, once failure is initiated
mechanical behaviour is critically influenced by crack
propagation
Plain concrete fails suddenly once the deflection
corresponding to the ultimate flexural strength is
exceeded
obviously not desirable for any construction material

Why Steel Fibres in Concrete???

(Cont.)
Concrete requires some form of tensile reinforcement
to compensate its brittle behaviour
to improve its tensile strength and strain capacity
Steel has been used as the material of choice for
tensile reinforcement in concrete
Conventionally, this reinforcement is in the form of
continuous steel bars placed in the concrete structure
in the appropriate positions to withstand the imposed
tensile and shear stresses

Why Steel Fibres in Concrete???

(Cont.)
In conventional plain concrete structural cracks (micro
cracks) develop even before loading, particularly due to
drying shrinkage or other causes of volume change
When loaded these micro cracks propagate and open up
and due to stress concentration and additional micro
cracks are formed
These micro cracks are main cause for elastic
deformation in concrete
So,
Problems related to concrete brittleness and poor
resistance to cracking can be addressed by reinforcing

What is SFRC
SFRC is short form for Steel Fiber Reinforced Concrete
Steel Fibre reinforced concrete (SFRC) may be defined as a composite
material made with Portland cement, aggregate, and incorporating
discrete discontinuous steel fibres.
Compared to the conventional reinforcement, the fibre reinforcement
is:
Distributed throughout a cross section whereas bars are only place
where needed.
Relatively short and closely spaced while bars are continuous and
not as closely spaced.
Not comparable, in term of area, to the one of the bars
The role of randomly distributed discontinuous fibres is to bridge
across the cracks and provide some post- cracking ductility.

Fibre Bridging in SFRC

The tensile fracture mechanism of SFRC concrete is a complex
phenomenon
The post cracking behavior is affected by two different
mechanisms:
Aggregate bridging that is always present in the plain concrete
Fiber bridging that contributes to energy dissipation in FRC
concrete
The fiber bridging is always predominant, but the final bearing
in uniaxial tension is the combination of both the two
mechanisms
aggregate bridging decays to zero for a crack opening of
around 0.3 mm
The addition of fibers increases the work of fracture and the

Mechanical Behavior of SFRC

The mechanical behavior of FRC depends surely on the :
Amount of fibre : which shows benefits from 1 % until 15 %
Orientation of the fibres: Aligned in the direction of stress or randomly distributed
And largely on the pullout versus load (or loadslip) behavior of the individual
fibres
The fibre pullout behavior is the gradual debonding of an interface surrounding
the fibre, followed by frictional slip and pullout of fibre
The bond, responsible of the forces transmission between fibre and matrix, has
different components:
the physical and/or chemical adhesion between fibre and matrix;
the frictional resistance;
the mechanical component (arising from the fibre geometry, e.g. deformed,
waved or hookedend);
the fibretofibre interlock

Compressive Behavior of SFRC

Fibres do little to enhance the static compressive strength of
concrete
Even in members which contain conventional reinforcement in
addition to the steel fibres, the fibres have little effect on
compressive strength
However, the fibres do substantially increase the post-cracking
ductility

LONGITUDINAL STRAIN X

Tensile Behavior
Fibres aligned in the direction of the tensile stress may bring about
very large increases in direct tensile strength
However, for more or less randomly distributed fibres, the increase
in strength is smaller
as in compression, steel fibres do lead to major increases in the
post-cracking behavior to tensile stresses
Effect of fibre content on
tensile strength

Flexural Toughness
The behavior of plain concrete and SFRC is made clear with the help of a
four point beam bending test
for plain concrete, a sudden and brittle mode of failure occurs after the
peak load is reached which then is used to calculate the flexural strength
of the concrete
When sufficient ductility is ensured in the beam with the addition of steel
fibres in concrete, a strain softening phenomenon is observed after the
load at first crack or peak load in the beam
With this kind of toughening behavior in the beam, post-crack flexural
strength of SFRC is guaranteed

Mechanism of Crack Formation and Propagation in

SFRC Beam
A longitudinal reinforced concrete beam in threepoint bending
The first crack that appears in a beam normally is in
correspondence of the region where the bending moment is
maximum and the shear force is small
These cracks are aligned with each other and, more or less,
perpendicular to the flexural stress, accompanied by nonlinearity
in loaddeflection response

As visible from normal load to deflection curve,

after a certain point, the behavior from linear becomes nonlinear

Mechanism of Crack Formation and Propagation in

SFRC Beam (Cont.)

Increasing the load more cracks are formed away from the region of
maximum bending moment and also the nonlinearity increases
These further cracks are along the region where the shear forces are
no longer small

For this reason they are in mixed mode condition (mode I + II), but
always normal to the major tensile principal stress
They are no more parallel to the direction of the applied load
(sometimes these are called shear cracks)
Mode II is also responsible of the sliding of the crack faces
Longitudinal bars, transversal bars and fibres counteract the opening
of the crack, but it is difficult to separate their effects for quantifying
the contribution of each element

Mechanism of Crack Formation and Propagation in

SFRC Beam (Cont.)
Further increasing the load does grow a dominant crack towards
the reduced compression zone until failure take place
This response is generally ductile
The mode of failure (due to the combination of shear
and normal stresses) is often sudden and unstable and it is called
the diagonal
tension effect
mode of
(orthe
shear mode)
The
most significant
presence of steel fibres is the cracking
behaviour
The beams made out of FRC display an increased number of both
flexural and shear cracks at closer spacing than the corresponding
beams without fibres

Structural Application of SFRC

SFRC can be used to improve the shear and flexure behavior of beams
SFRC may reliably be used to reduce the columns damage by
preventing the concrete cover to spall out at earlier stages and increase
their initial stiffness and energy dissipation, especially for uniaxial loads
SFRC can be utilized in Beam-Column joints , as the joint with fibres
give high post-cracking ductile behaviour taking higher loads
Addition of steel fibres can provide an increased impact resistance to
conventional RC members, thereby enhancing the resistance to local
damage and spalling
Rafts and Foundation Slabs of Buildings have also been getting equal
attention in extreme cases where the regular reinforcements are too
congested and the bar diameters are already too high (= 32 mm). In
such cases, steel fibres become most suited as they contribute
substantially to the moment capacity of the sections.

Conclusion
Since concrete is characterized as a brittle material with
low tensile strength and low strain capacity
Its mechanical behaviour is critically influenced by crack
propagation
Problems related to concrete brittleness and poor
resistance to cracking can be improved by reinforcing
plain concrete with randomly distributed fibres
Addition of fibres reduces immediate deflection, longterm deflection and crack width

THANK
YOU!!!