Experimental Study on the Effect of Waste Steel Fibers in High Strength Concrete properties

Abstract

The potential use of fiber reinforcement for enhancing the mechanical properties of fiber reinforced concrete had been clearly established and recognized that fiber reinforcement is an effective way to enhance the fracture toughness of concrete in all modes of failure. However, most of the published work, has focused exclusively on steel fiber-reinforced normal strength concrete (SFRC). This research have been focused on investigating the effect of steel fibers on workability, compressive strength, splitting tensile strength, and flexural strength of steel fiber reinforced concrete with varying fraction of fibers (0%, 1%, 1.50%, 2.% and 2.5%) by volume of concrete. Three Specimens were prepared for each fibers content with high concrete strength of 40MPa, and 60MPa. The non-fibrous specimen (0% fibers) is used as a controlled concrete and the comparative study between control specimen and steel fiber reinforced concrete were done on the mechanical performance of different high strength concrete depending on the result obtained from the tests. From the research, it was observed that the addition of fibers reduces workability of wet concrete. Concrete compressive strength decreased from 45.75MPa to 44.52MPa for C 40 and also for C 60 concrete strength decreases from 63.1MPa to 61.78MPa up to 1% but the value was greater than the required grade. The greater strength improvement was observed for tensile and flexural strength than compressive strength. The split tensile strength was increased as the percentage of steel fiber increased in the mix by 1%, 1.5%, 02% and 2.5% Steel Fiber addition. The maximum flexural strength was found at 2.5% steel fiber addition. Additional load carrying capacity after peak load is more observed for fiber reinforced concrete than control specimen. The crack bridging mechanism was more observed when fiber was used.