Steel Fiber Reinforced Concrete Under Concentrated Load

The situation of high compressive load transmitted onto limited area of concrete member occurs frequently in a variety of industrial and engineering structures. Hence, numerous investigations have been conducted in the past to study the behavior of concrete under such loading, but mostly of plain and conventionally reinforced concretes. With the increasingly widespread use of steel fibers in the field of structural application, it is therefore of great interest to investigate the performance of steel fiber reinforced concrete (SFRC) subjected to concentrated load. The objective of the present PhD thesis was to characterize the load-bearing and fracture behavior of SFRC under concentrated loading (i.e. point loading) by means of experimental approach. Based on the experimental results, it can be concluded that the presence of steel fibers substantially improved the load-bearing behavior of concrete under concentrated load and changed the failure mode of concrete from a brittle to a ductile one. The findings acquired here can be used as fundamental information for the composition and optimization of SFRC mixtures, the production of SFRC concrete elements as well as for the constructive design and practical application of SFRC structural members exposed to concentrated load.