Design aid for shear strength of steel fibre based concrete

Abstract

Shear strength of concrete especially fibre based is a complex phenomenon involving number of variables giving rise to lengthy equations with cumbersome calculations thereby making it difficult to use these equations in practice in design offices and thus rendering fibre based concrete unpopular in construction industry from users'point of view. In this study, a simple design chart for the evolution of shear strength of steel fibre based concrete has been proposed. Limited experiments on shear strength of steel fibre based concrete beam elements have been conducted. The experimental results assigned with factor of safety showed good agreement with the calculated results. It was noticed that addition of steel fibre in the concrete matrix improves the shear strength of RC beams and tend to change the mode of failure from brittle shear to ductile flexure. Fibre based concrete, interfacial bond stress, ductility, fibre factor, fibre geometry, shear strength, shear span, post cracking strength.