Flexural Strength of Modified Reactive Powder Concrete One Way Slabs

Abstract

Background: Over the last three decades, the interest in using advanced high-performance materials in the construction industry has been increasing worldwide. Recently, a very high strength cement-based composite with high ductility called Reactive Powder Concrete (RPC) has been developed. The RPC concept is based on the principle that a material with a minimum of defects such as micro-cracks and voids will be able to achieve greater load-carrying capacity and durability. Methods: In the present paper, an experimental program of sixteen reinforced concrete one-way slabs was conducted to investigate their behavior under flexural loading. Four of these slabs were with Normal Concrete (NC) and the others of Modified Reactive Powder Concrete (MRPC). All slabs were identical in the dimension of its length and width (1000×500) mm, respectively, and its thickness was varied as one of the variables used in the present work. Other parameters for a one-way slab are concrete type, steel fibers content and flexural steel reinforcement ratio (0.33 and 0.66)%. Results: The results showed that the MRPC slabs with steel fibers failed in a ductile manner and had ultimate load capacity more than that of non-fibrous MRPC with an improvement percentage that reaches up to (66) %. This percentage became (212) % in comparison with normal concrete slabs. Conclusions: Moreover, the results showed that slabs, for both concrete types, reinforced with lower steel ratio failed by tension mode, otherwise, the slabs of higher reinforcement steel ratio failed by combined tension-shear mode. However, an improvement was observed in the ultimate load capacity up to (53 and 98) % when the ratio of steel reinforcement and slab thickness increased, respectively.