Investigation of mode I fracture behavior of copper slag-SFRSCC

Abstract

This study has examined how coarse CS (copper slag) aggregates (20–60 %) and HESFs (hooked-end steel fibers) (0.1–0.5 %) affect the performance, microstructure, and fracture/mechanical features of SCCs (self-compacting concretes) under pure loading mode I. To estimate the SCC ductility, fracture toughness and fracture energy behavior, use has been made of common specimens such as ENDB, ENDC and SCB and the Work Fracture Method. According to the results, adding CS (up to 30 %) improves the efficiency and strengthens the microstructure and mechanical properties. While 0.3–0.5 % SFs affect the fresh concrete properties negatively, they affect those of the hardened concrete positively and increase the mechanical properties. At high CS and SF values, fracture parameters weaken slightly due to improper fiber distribution and bad SF-CS locking and interaction effects. The WFM yielded close fracture features for ENDB specimens, but those of ENDC specimens were more than the actual values. SCB specimens were more suitable than others because they were prepared easily, consumed less material and were modeled better under pure mode I. According to the results, ALK (Active Learning Kriging) models estimated the fracture characteristics with high accuracy and yielded a correlation coefficient in the 0.87–0.95 range.