Fracture property of steel fiber reinforced concrete at early age

Abstract

This research is focused on obtaining the fracture property of steel fiber reinforced concrete(SFRC) specimens at early ages of 1, 2, 3 and 7-day, respectively. For this purpose, three point bending tests of nine groups of SFRC beams with notch of 40mm depth and different steel fiber ratios were conducted. The experimental results of early age specimens were compared with the 28-day hardened SFRC specimens. The test results indicated that the steel fiber ratios and curing age significantly influenced the fracture properties of SFRC. A reasonable addition of steel fiber improved the fracture toughness of SFRC, while the fracture energy of SFRC developed with curing age. Moreover, a quadratic relationship between splitting strength and fracture toughness was established based on the experiment results. Additionally, afinite element (FE) method was used to investigate the fracture properties of SFRC.A comparison between the FE analysis and experiment results was also made. The numerical analysis fitted well with the test results, and further details on the failure behaviors of SFRC could be revealed by the suggested numerical simulation method.