• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.611-621
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• 2017

This paper presents an investigation on the fire resistance of high strength fiber reinforced concrete filled box columns (CFBCs) under combined temperature and loading. Two groups of full-size specimens were fabricated. The control group was a steel box filled with high-strength concrete (HSC), while the experimental group consisted of a steel box filled with high strength fiber concrete (HFC) and two steel boxes filled with fiber reinforced concrete. Prior to fire test, a constant compressive load (i.e., load level for fire design) was applied to the column specimens. Thermal load was then applied on the column specimens in form of ISO 834 standard fire curve in a large-scale laboratory furnace until the set experiment termination condition was reached. The test results show that filling fiber concrete can improve the fire resistance of CFBC. Moreover, the configuration of longitudinal reinforcements and transverse stirrups can significantly improve the fire resistance of CFBCs.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.63-71
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• 2019

Thermal energy from high temperatures can cause concrete damage, including mechanical and chemical degradation. In view of this, the residual mechanical properties of high-strength fiber reinforced concrete with a design strength of 75 MPa exposed to $400-800^{\circ}C$ were investigated in this study. The test results show that the average residual compressive strength of high-strength fiber reinforced concrete after being exposed to $400-800^{\circ}C$ was 88%, 69%, and 23% of roomtemperature strength, respectively. In addition, the benefit of steel fibers on the residual compressive strength of concrete was limited, but polypropylene fibers can help to maintain the residual compressive strength and flexural strength of concrete after exposure to $400-600^{\circ}C$. Further, the load-deflection curve of specimen containing steel fibers exposed to $400-800^{\circ}C$ had a better fracture toughness.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.63 no.5
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• pp.629-637
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• 2017

Continuous concrete beams are commonly used as structural members in the reinforced concrete constructions. The use of fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) bars provide attractive solutions for these structures particularly for gaining corrosion resistance. This paper presents experimental results of eight two-span continuous concrete beams; two of them reinforced with pure glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) bars and six of them reinforced with combinations of GFRP and steel bars. The continuous beams were tested under monotonically applied loading condition. The experimental load-deflection behavior and failure mode of the continuous beams were examined. In addition, the continuous beams were analyzed with a numerical method to predict the load-deflection curves and to compare them with the experimental results. Results show that there is a good agreement between the experimental and the theoretical load-deflection curves of continuous beams reinforced with pure GFRP bars and combinations of GFRP and steel bars.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.655-661
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• 2017

Fiber reinforced concretes exhibit higher tensile strength depending on the percent and type of the fiber used. These concretes are used to reduce cracks and improve concrete behavior. The use of these fibers increases the production costs and reduces the compressive strength to a certain extent. Therefore, the use of fiber reinforced concrete in regions where higher tensile strength is required can cut costs and improve the overall structural strength. The behavior of fiber reinforced concrete and normal concrete adjacent to each other was investigated in the present study. The concrete used was self-compacting and did not require vibration. The samples had 0, 1, 2 and 4 wt% polypropylene fibers. 15 cm sample cubes were subjected to uniaxial loads to investigate their compressive strength. Fiber Self-Compacting Concrete was poured in the mold up to 0, 30, 50, 70 and 100 percent of the mold height, and then Self-Compacting Concrete without fiber was added to the empty section of that mold. In order to investigate concrete behavior under bending moment, concrete beam samples with similar conditions were prepared and subjected to the three-point bending flexural test. The results revealed that normal Self-Compacting Concrete and Fiber Self-Compacting Concrete may be used in adjacent to each other in structures and structural members. Moreover, no separation was observed at the interface of Fiber Self-Compacting Concrete and Self-Compacting Concrete, either in the cubic samples under compression or in the concrete beams under bending moment.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.391-403
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• 2014

In this study an innovative method of earthquake-resistant strengthening of reinforced concrete structures is presented for the first time. Strengthening according to this new method consists of the construction of steel fiber high-strength concrete jackets without conventional reinforcement which is usually applied in the construction of conventional reinforced concrete jackets (i.e., longitudinal reinforcement, stirrups, hoops). The proposed in this study innovative steel fiber high-strength or ultra high-strength concrete jackets were proved to be much more effective than the reinforced concrete jackets and the FRP-jackets when used for the earthquake-resistant strengthening of reinforced concrete structural members.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.247-255
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• 2019

Several reinforced concrete structures that get deteriorated by rebar corrosion are retrofitted using Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP). When rebar comes in direct contact with CFRP, rebar may corrode, as iron is more active than carbon. Progression of corrosion of rebar in strengthened RC structures has been carried out when rebar comes in direct contact with CFRP. The experimentation is carried out in two phases. In phase I, corrosion of bare steel bar is monitored by making its contact with CFRP. In phase II, concrete specimens with surface bonded CFRP were casted and subjected to the realistic exposure conditions keeping direct contact between rebar and CFRP. Progression of corrosion has been monitored by various parameters: Half-cell potential, Tafel extrapolation and Linear Polarisation Resistance. On termination of exposure, to find residual bond stress between rebar and concrete, pull-out test was performed. Rebar in contact with CFRP has shown substantially higher corrosion. The level of corrosion will be more with more area of contact.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.527-546
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• 2014

Portland cement concrete, which has higher strength and stiffness than asphalt concrete, has been widely applied on pavements. However, the brittle fracture characteristic of cement concrete restricts its application in highway pavement construction. Since the polypropylene fiber can improve the fracture toughness of cement concrete, Polypropylene Fiber-Reinforced Concrete (PFRC) is attracting more and more attention in civil engineering. In order to study the effect of polypropylene fiber on the generation and evolution process of the local deformation band in concrete, a series of three-point bending tests were performed using the new technology of the digital speckle correlation method for FRC notched beams with different volumetric contents of polypropylene fiber. The modified Double-K model was utilized for the first time to calculate the stress intensity factors of instability and crack initiation of fiber-reinforced concrete beams. The results indicate that the polypropylene fiber can enhance the fracture toughness. Based on the modified Double-K fracture theory, the maximum fracture energy of concrete with 3.2% fiber (in volume) is 47 times higher than the plain concrete. No effort of fiber content on the strength of the concrete was found. Meanwhile to balance the strength and resistant fracture toughness, concrete with 1.6% fiber is recommended to be applied in pavement construction.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.999-1018
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• 2016

Enhanced tensile properties of fiber reinforced concrete make it suitable for strengthening of reinforced concrete elements due to their superior corrosion resistance and high tensile strength properties. Recently, the use of fibers as strengthening material has increased motivating the development of numerical tools for the design of this type of intervention technique. This paper presents numerical analysis results carried out on a set of concrete beams reinforced with short fibers. To this purpose, a database of experimental results was collected from an available literature. A reliable and simple three-dimensional Finite Element (FE) model was defined. The linear and nonlinear behavior of all materials was adequately modeled by employing appropriate constitutive laws in the numerical simulations. To simulate the fiber reinforced concrete cracking tensile behavior an approach grounded on the solid basis of micromechanics was used. The results reveal that the developed models can accurately capture the performance and predict the load-carrying capacity of such reinforced concrete members. Furthermore, a parametric study is conducted using the validated models to investigate the effect of fiber material type, fiber volume fraction, and concrete compressive strength on the performance of concrete beams.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.115-125
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• 2020

To reduce the damage of concrete in fire, a new type of lightweight cinder aggregate concrete was developed due to the excellent fire resistance of cinder. To further enhance its fire resistance, Polypropylene (PP) Fibers which can enhance the fire resistance of concrete were also used in this type of concrete. However, the bond behavior of this new type of concrete after fire exposure is still unknown. To investigate its bond behavior, 185 specimens were heated up to 22, 200, 400, 600 or 800℃ for 2 h duration respectively, which is followed by subsequent compressive and tensile tests at room temperature. The concrete-rebar bond strength of C30 PP fiber-reinforced cinder concrete was subsequently investigated through pull-out tests after fire exposure. The microstructures of the PP fiber-reinforced cinder concrete and the status of the PP fibre at different temperature were inspected using an advanced scanning electron microscopy, aiming to understand the mechanism of the bonding deterioration under high temperature. The effects of rebar diameter and bond length on the bond strength of PP fiber-reinforced cinder concrete were investigated based on the test results. The bond-slip relation of PP fiber-reinforced cinder concrete after exposure at different temperature was derived based on the test results.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.153-169
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• 2012

The contribution of steel fibers on the 28-day compressive strength of high-performance steel fiber reinforced concrete was investigated, is presented. An extensive experimentation was carried out over water-cementitious materials (w/cm) ratios ranging from 0.25 to 0.40, with silica fume-cementitious materials ratios from 0.05 to 0.15, and fiber volume fractions ($V_f$= 0.0, 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5%) with the aspect ratios of 80 and 53. Based on the test results of 44 concrete mixes, mathematical model was developed using statistical methods to quantify the effect of fiber content on compressive strength of HPSFRC in terms of fiber reinforcing index. The expression, being developed with strength ratios and not with absolute values of strengths, is independent of specimen parameters and is applicable to wide range of w/cm ratios, and used in the mix design of steel fiber reinforced concrete. The estimated strengths are within ${\pm}3.2%$ of the actual values. The model was tested for the strength results of 14 mixes having fiber aspect ratio of 53. On examining the validity of the proposed model, there exists a good correlation between the predicted values and the experimental values of different researchers. Equation is also proposed for the size effect of the concrete specimens.