Torsional Behaviour of Steel Fibre Reinforced Alkali Activated Concrete

Abstract

Nine alkali-activated concrete beams were produced and tested under pure torsional load to failure. The alkali-activated concrete beams were produced with following variables: (i) fibres only, (ii) conventionally reinforced or (iii) a hybrid of both fibres and conventional steel reinforcement. The fibres only beams were found to have approximately 20% higher cracking torque than conventionally reinforced beams. However, fibres only beams were observed to have lower post crack ductility and inconsistent post crack behaviour, in comparison to conventionally reinforced alkali-activated concrete (AAC) beams. On the other hand, the hybrid reinforcements in AAC beams were found to demonstrate more ductile post crack behaviour consistently of the beams tested. Hybrid reinforcement was also shown to have 20% and 25% improvement in cracking and ultimate torque compared to conventionally reinforced, which suggests that it is suitable for industrial applications to improve structure capacity. The ultimate torque results of the beams were compared to an analytical model that considered the contribution of fibres. It was found that the ultimate torque of the hybrid reinforced beam has good correlation with the model but overestimated conventionally reinforced beams.

Keywords

• alkali activated concrete
• torsion
• steel fibres
• geopolymer
• fly ash
• ground granulated blast furnace slag