Post Cracking Behaviour of Steel Fibre Reinforced Concrete: From Material to Structure

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Copyright: Amin, Ali
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Abstract
Although Steel Fibre Reinforced Concrete (SFRC) has a history in academia of over 50 years, its adoption in practice has mainly been limited to non-critical elements. In order for SFRC to be used on a regular basis, a rational framework of material models identifying the key material parameters must be established. The defining property when considering the design of a structural member manufactured with SFRC is its post cracking, or residual, tensile strength. The first part of this thesis sets out to experimentally identify the post cracking characteristics of SFRC at the material level. Two methods are adopted: the first being a direct tension test; the second, a prism bending test combined with an inverse analysis. In this section, a rational simple yet effective inverse analysis procedure is derived. The model is versatile in that it is independent of specimen geometry, testing span and method of testing. The model is validated against 23 different SFRC mixes obtained over the course of this study and from data presented in the literature; it is shown to correlate well with the test data. The second part of this thesis examines the interrelationship of steel fibres and conventional steel reinforcement in carrying tension. Four series of SFRC tension ties of varying fibre dosages and longitudinal reinforcing ratios were manufactured and tested. A model founded upon the Tension Chord Model was deployed to consider the post cracking residual tensile strength of the fibres provided at the crack. The model was shown to accurately predict the behaviour of the tested specimens and, also, those found in the literature. The final part of this dissertation investigates the shear capacity of ten large scale SFRC beams containing varying degrees of shear ligature reinforcement and fibre quantities. The results indicate that as the fibre dosage increased, the cracks became visibly more dispersed and finer, and were able to engage more stirrups. A set of numerical analyses were conducted using the commercially available software ATENA. It was found that if a suitable constitutive law in tension was used, the model could accurately predict the behaviour of the beams.
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Author(s)
Amin, Ali
Supervisor(s)
Foster, Stephen
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Publication Year
2015
Resource Type
Thesis
Degree Type
PhD Doctorate
UNSW Faculty
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