Analysis of steel fiber reinforced concrete wall panels under compression, flexural and impact loading

Abstract

Fiber reinforced concrete is a concrete strengthened through discrete strings of reinforcing material. Reinforcing material as fibers can be of steel, glass or any synthetic or any natural material. Fiber increases the structural integrity of concrete. Steel Fiber Reinforced Concrete (SFRC) is extensively being handled in construction nowadays. This paper revolves around design of SFRC wall panel and analyses of its performance characteristics as compared to conventional concrete (CC) wall panels. The SFRC wall panels and cubes were casted with different percentages (0%, 1%, 1.75% and 2.5%) of steel fibers (hooked type) as a volume of total mixture. Under this study, the SFRC wall panels and the CC wall panels were exposed to flexural and impact loading. Also, cubes were examined at 7 and 28 days for compression strength. The compression strength test on concrete showed higher values on addition of hooked steel fibers. Likewise, flexural strength of wall panels made with steel fiber also was increased with the growth in the percentage steel fibers. The graph of peak load v/s deflection was plotted and it showed the optimum peak load at 1.75% fiber content. Also, in the impact test, the value of impact blows was found more for the higher concentration of fibers.