Experimental Investigation of Compressive and Tensile Strength of Steel Fiber Reactive Powder Concrete

Abstract

Reactive powder concrete (RPC) is one of the ultra high performance concrete ( UHPC ) with superior physical and mechanical properties . Reactive powder concrete is produced using cement and very fine powdered materials including crushed quartz , silica fume and low water to cement ratio using super plasticizer . In this study , an optimum mixing ratio of RPC has been used , in which water / binder ratio ( W / B ) was equal to 0.15 and the ratio of super plasticizer to cement ( SP / C ), was equal to 3 % . For a long time , the idea of adding fibers to various types of concrete has been considered to improve its physical and mechanical properties . In this research , by performing several experiments, the influence of adding steel fibers on the compressive and tensile strength of RPC has been investigated . The results show that the average compressive strength of samples with 1 , 2 and 3 percent volumetric fibers increases about 6 , 20 and 5 percent , respectively , compared to non - fibrous specimens. This increase in tensile strength is 46 , 73 and 66 percent , respectively for the same amounts of steel fibers .

Keywords

• reactive powder concrete
• ultra high performance concrete
• compressive strength
• tensile strength
• steel fibers