Mechanical Properties of Reactive Powder Concrete (RPC) with Various Steel Fiber and Silica Fume Contents

Abstract

An experimental work was carried out to investigate some mechanical properties of Reactive Powder Concrete (RPC) which are particularly required as input data for structural design. These properties include compressive strength, tensile strength (direct, splitting and flexural), flexural toughness, load-deflection capacity and static modulus of elasticity. The effects of three variable parameters on these properties were carefully studied which are, the silica fume content SF (0%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, and 30%) as a partial replacement by weight of cement, hooked macro steel fibers volume fraction Vf (0%, 1%, 2% and 3%) and superplasticizertype(Sikament®-163N and PC200).The diameter of the steel fiber is 0.5mm and its length is 30mm with aspect ratio 60.The experimental results showed that as the silica fume content (SF) increases from 0% to 30% the compressive strength significantly increases, while the increase in tensile strength is relatively lower. The inclusion of steel fibers leads to a considerable increase intensile strength, while the addition of steel fibers causes a slight increase in compressive strength of RPC as fiber volume fraction increases from 0% to 3%.The increase in the steel fibers volume fraction and silica fume content improved the loaddeflection behavior and consequently gave higher ductility and fracture toughness of RPC.

Keywords

• reactive powder concrete
• mechanical properties
• load
• deflection capacity
• steel fiber
• silica fume
• superplasticizer