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2017 00011057 - 151493 - 62853
2017 00011057 - 151493 - 62853
Soon Poh Yap, U. Johnson Alengaram, Kim Hung Mo & Mohd Zamin Jumaat
To cite this article: Soon Poh Yap, U. Johnson Alengaram, Kim Hung Mo & Mohd Zamin
Jumaat (2017): Ductility behaviours of oil palm shell steel fibre-reinforced concrete beams
under flexural loading, European Journal of Environmental and Civil Engineering, DOI:
10.1080/19648189.2017.1320234
Article views: 19
1. Introduction
The newly developed concrete known as the oil palm shell fibre-reinforced concrete (OPSFRC) has
gained substantial research interests for the past five years, attributed to its enhanced mechanical
properties compared to the normal weight concrete (NWC) and oil palm shell concrete (OPSC) (Shafigh,
Mahmud, & Jumaat, 2011; Yap et al., 2015a; Yap, Bu, Alengaram, Mo, & Jumaat, 2014; Yap, Alengaram,
Jumaat, & Khaw, 2015b; Yew, Mahmud, Ang, & Yew, 2015). The combined advantages of oil palm shell
(OPS) and fibre (Figure 1) enabled the production of OPSFRC as high-strength sustainable lightweight
concrete.
Reports by Teo, Mannan, and Kurian (2006) and Alengaram, Jumaat, and Mahmud (2008) revealed
that the flexural behaviours of reinforced OPSC beams were comparable to that of NWC and other LWCs
containing pumice and expanded clay. However, like other LWCs, the low tensile strength of OPSC has
limited its structural applications (Yap, Alengaram, & Jumaat, 2013; Yap, Khaw, Alengaram, & Jumaat,
2015c). Hence, the incorporation of fibres in OPSC has been proven to enhance its mechanical properties,
torsional behaviours, impact resistance and toughness (Mo, Yap, Alengaram, Jumaat, & Bu, 2014; Yap et
al., 2015a; Yew et al., 2015). Despite that, the development of fibre-reinforced LWCs including OPSFRC
remains as a new and challenging area of research, attributed to the types of lightweight aggregates
and fibres used (Gribniak, Kaklauskas, Hung Kwan, Bacinskas, & Ulbinas, 2012; Hassanpour, Shafigh, &
Mahmud, 2012; Khelifa, Leklou, Bellal, Hebert, & Ledesert, 2016; Yap et al., 2013). The great diversity in
the type and geometry of fibres yields varying bond characteristics, thus limiting the application of
fibre-reinforced concrete in structural members (Gribniak et al., 2012; Marthong & Sarma, 2016; Toraldo,
Mariani, & Crispino, 2016). Furthermore, the flexural behaviours of fibre-reinforced LWCs become more
complicated with different types of lightweight aggregate used.
From the literature, improvement in flexural performances of fibre-reinforced concrete beams has
been observed, such as reduced brittleness and improved crack resistance of fibre-reinforced concrete
beam attributed to the enhanced crack resistance (Altun & Aktaş, 2013; Altun, Haktanir, & Ari, 2007;
Meda, Minelli, & Plizzari, 2012; Qian & Indubhushan, 1999; Wang & Belarbi, 2011; Yang, Min, Shin, &
Yoon, 2012). This is supplemented by the delayed initiation of flexural cracks, decreased crack widths
and doubled first crack load in the flexural beam test conducted by Yang et al. (2012). Moreover, the
addition of steel fibre into the reinforced concrete system improved flexural rigidity, yield load, moment
capacity and toughness of reinforced concrete beam (Altun et al., 2007; Mahmud, Yang, & Hassan, 2013;
Qian & Indubhushan, 1999; Wang & Belarbi, 2011; You, Chen, & Dong, 2011). Fibres significantly enhance
the behaviour at service conditions by increasing the stiffness in the cracked stage and, therefore, by
limiting the crack openings and deformations (Meda et al., 2012).
However, the main challenge in this study lies on the contradictory observations on the flexural
ductility. In the plain concrete without reinforcement, steel fibres improved the tensile strength, post
cracking behaviours and ductility (Ng, Foster, Htet, & Htut, 2013; Yap et al., 2014). Meda et al. (2012)
and You et al. (2011) had demonstrated that the fibre reinforcement can lead to a reduction in the
rotation capacity and sectional ductility of reinforced concrete members. On the other hand, Altun
and Aktaş (2013) shows the addition of steel fibre increased the flexural ductility by 9–18%. Qian and
Indubhushan (1999) and Wang and Belarbi (2011) also reported that steel fibres can increase displace-
ment of beams at failure.
To date, there are no reports available on the flexural behaviours of OPSFRC beams. Therefore,
the main objective of this study is to investigate the effects of steel fibre in the flexural behaviours of
OPSFRC reinforced beams. This study compares the flexural ductility characteristics (i) between OPSC
and OPSFRC beams and (ii) OPSFRC with different fibre volumes (.25, .50, .75 and 1.00%).
Mix designa- Cement Mining sand Water Silica fume Superplasti- Steel fibre
tions (kg/m3) OPS (kg/m3 (kg/m3) (kg/m3) (kg/m3) zer (kg/m3) (%vol.)
OPSC 530 320 970 170 53 3.5 0
OPSFRC-25 530 320 970 170 53 3.5 .25
OPSFRC-50 530 320 970 170 53 3.5 .50
OPSFRC-75 530 320 970 170 53 3.5 .75
OPSFRC-100 530 320 970 170 53 3.5 1.00
properties of OPS which enable OPS as a potential material to produce lightweight green concrete
are its low bulk density and good impact/abrasion resistance. The compacted bulk density, aggregate
impact value and Los Angeles abrasion value of OPS are 635 kg/m3, 2.11 and 5%, respectively. Before
the mixing process, the OPS below 2.36 mm was sieved and removed, while the OPS with sizes between
2.36–15 mm was used in all the mixing proportions. In addition, all OPS were soaked in water for 24 h
before the mixing process to keep the OPS in saturated surface dry condition and thus preventing the
mixing water to be absorbed by the OPS. Meanwhile, mining sand with specific gravity and fineness
modulus of 2.65 and 2.7, respectively was used as fine aggregates. Potable water (pH = 6.5) was used
in the pre-treatment of OPS, mixing and curing processes. A constant water to binder ratio of .30 was
used in all the mixing proportions. To improve the workability of the fresh OPSC and OPSFRC mixes, a
polycarboxylate-based superplasticizer of .65% of cement weight was added.
In order to produce OPSFRC mixes, hooked-end steel fibres of aspect ratio 65 (Figure 1(b)) were
added into OPSC. The length and diameter of steel fibre are 35 and .55 mm, respectively. Specific gravity,
tensile strength and modulus of elasticity of the steel fibres are 7.9, 1100 MPa, and 205 GPa, respectively.
fibres decreased the slump by about 30–70%. As the fibre content increases, lower slump was reported
in the OPSFRC mix. The slump reduction in the OPSFRC mixes can be explained by the fibre–cement
matrix network in the fresh concrete. The network increases the concrete viscosity and substantially
restricts the flow of the fresh OPSFRC (Domagała, 2011; Yap et al., 2015a; Yap, Alengaram, Jumaat, &
Khaw, 2016). All OPSFRC mixes can be compacted with good finishing. However, the fibre content
cannot be further increased beyond 1% due to the poor compaction.
Previous studies on OPSFRC with steel fibres proved that the addition of fibres of different aspect
ratios enhanced the mechanical properties of OPSFRC (Yap et al., 2015a; Yap et al., 2015c). In this work,
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND CIVIL ENGINEERING 5
the effect of fibre volume on the mechanical properties of OPSFRC is discussed. The mechanical prop-
erties of all mixes are tabulated in Table 2. Firstly, the development of the compressive strength of
OPSC and OPSFRC showed comparable trend. The 1, 3 and 7-day compressive strength of all mixes
were 50–55, 73–77 and 95–98%, respectively, compared to the 28-day compressive strength. The high
7 to 28-day compressive strength ratios indicate that the incorporation of silica fume contributed to
the high early strengths in all the mixes.
The results show that the addition of steel fibres up to 1% by volume resulted in improved mechan-
ical properties of OPSFRC, compared to the OPSC. In addition, the mechanical properties of OPSFRC
show increasing trends with increasing fibre volume. Therefore, the highest compressive and flexural
strengths are found in the OPSFRC-100 mix with 1% steel fibres at 47.3 and 8.2 MPa, respectively and
both these values are 40 and 150% higher than the control OPSC. The addition of steel fibres below
.50% only produced improvements in compressive and flexural strength within the range of 16–21 and
31–65%. However, the incorporation of fibre volume beyond .50% yields significant improvement of
compressive and flexural strength up to 105–150%. This indicates that a minimum fibre volume of .5%
is required to produce notable improvement on the strengths of OPSFRC specimens. Meanwhile, the
benefits of steel fibres are also evident in the modulus of elasticity (MOE) and Poisson’s ratio as shown in
Table 2. MOE was measured as stress to longitudinal strain ratio, while Poisson’s ratio was measured as
lateral to longitudinal strain ratios under compression loading. Previous studies reported that the MOE
values of OPSC are about 35–50% lower than that of NWC (Alengaram, Mahmud, & Jumaat, 2011; Yap et
al., 2016). The reason is that OPS has a lower stiffness and restraining effect. Hence, under compressive
loading, the OPS undergoes higher strain, which produces a lower MOE than the NWC.
Both the MOE and Poisson’s ratio of OPSFRC specimens surpassed the OPSC mix by 11–18%. This
indicates that the addition of steel fibres allowed the OPSFRC to sustain higher strains in both lon-
gitudinal and lateral directions. However, the improvements are independent on the fibre content
and this can be explained by the equal increase in both upper stress and strain which resulted in the
minimal change in the modulus of elasticity when fibre volume increases (Yap et al., 2016). In addition,
the porous lightweight aggregates leads to high brittleness of LWC and can result in a complete and
immediate loss of load carrying capacity once the tensile stress capacity is reached (Domagała, 2011;
Yap et al., 2015a). The brittleness of LWC including OPSC needs to be measured, and a direct indication
will be the brittleness ratios (compressive to flexural strength ratios) (Sun & Xu, 2009; Yap et al., 2015a;
Yap et al., 2016). In this study, the brittleness ratios for both OPSC and OPSFRC are reported in Table 2.
The brittleness ratio of OPSC was reported to be 10.40. The brittleness of OPSC was reduced by 12–45%
when fibre is added to the OPSC mix.
The enhancement mechanism of the steel fibres in the mechanical properties of OPSFRC can be
explained by the crack bridging effect. Figure 4(c) and (d) shows images of fibre bridging across the
beam cracks under flexural loadings taken using hand-held digital microscope. Additional energy is
required to overcome the fibre-cement matrix interfacial bond by both fibre debonding and fibre
pullout processes. The crack propagation in the OPSFRC is diverted, blunted or even stopped, thus
increasing the energy capacity of the concrete (Hamoush, Abu-Lebdeh, & Cummins, 2010; Makita &
Brühwiler, 2013; Şahin & Köksal, 2011; Singh, Shukla, & Brown, 2004; Sun & Xu, 2009; Yap et al., 2014).
Figure 4. Comparison of cracks between (a) OPSC and (b) OPSFRC-100 beams; (c) & (d) crack bridging effects of steel fibres.
35
OPSC
30 OPSFRC-25
OPSFRC-50
25 OPSFRC-75
Moment (kNm)
OPSFRC-100
20
15
10
0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Deflection (mm)
In addition, steel fibre reinforcement of volume fraction lower than .50% produced slight improve-
ment on the moment capacity of OPSFRC specimen (increment within the range of 4–8%), whereas
steel fibre addition of volume higher than .50% produced significant increment of 16–18% compared
to the plain OPSC beam. This shows that a minimum fibre volume of .50% is required to provide notable
improvement on the moment capacity of OPSFRC. This can be further supplemented by the discussions
in the Section 3.1, where a fibre content of more than .50% is essential to enhance the tensile strength
of OPSFRC specimens. In the case of OPSFRC beams, the fibres were randomly dispersed in both the
tension and compression zones. The fibre reinforcement enhanced the compression and tension tough-
ness, hence substantially improved the moment capacity of the OPSFRC beams.
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND CIVIL ENGINEERING 7
Ultimate Failure
Service load stage stage stage
Deflection Deflection Deflection Deflection Deflection at Deflection Deflection
at low ser- at yield at ultimate at moder- Deflection service load at moment prior to
vice load load, δyld load, δult ate service at service predicted by capacity failure, δf
Beam (mm) (mm) (mm) load (mm) load (mm) BS 8110 (mm) (mm) (mm)
OPSC 2.70 8.12 12.10 4.90 7.65 7.94 12.10 92.80
OPSFRC-25 1.07 7.14 11.16 3.17 5.97 8.55 11.16 66.06
OPSFRC-50 .85 9.98 15.28 2.92 6.08 8.88 15.28 62.97
OPSFRC-75 .57 7.71 10.56 2.90 5.80 9.91 10.56 60.54
OPSFRC-100 .91 12.04 18.92 5.05 8.81 10.53 18.92 55.13
Table 4. Span to deflection ratio and load at 50 mm deflection of OPSC and OPSFRC beams.
Similar observations could be drawn at other stages including yield (when rebar attains yield strain),
low service load (20% of ultimate load), moderate service load (40% of ultimate load), service load (BS
8110) and at ultimate load. The service load stages are selected according to the report of Teo et al.
(2006). In order to fulfil the serviceability limited state as outlined in both BS 8110 and Eurocode 2, the
span to service load deflection should not exceed 250. In addition, ASTM C1609 stated that the max-
imum span to service load deflection ratio is 150. Based on the results shown in Table 4, the span to
service load deflection ratios for OPSC and OPSFRC beams were found to be 23 and 30–40, respectively.
These values are well below the deflection limit stipulated in BS 8110, Eurocode 2 and ASTM C1609.
The deflections at service load for all beam specimens were also calculated based on curvature of
the beams as proposed in BS 8110 using Equation (1).
𝛿 = Kl 2 (1∕r) (1)
Where δ = deflection in mm, K = a constant depends on the distribution of bending moments of a
member, l = effective span of beam and 1/r = curvature. All the predicted deflections at service load
are shown in Table 3. It was observed that the experimental deflection of OPSC closely agreed to the
predicted deflection. However, the calculated deflections using the Equation (1) for the OPSFRC beams
are 20–80% higher than the values obtained experimentally. This is because BS 8110 code provisions do
not include the effect of steel fibres. The difference between calculated and experimental deflections
increased with the increasing steel fibre volume.
Despite the decrease in the flexural deflection, the role of fibres in post-yielding flexural behaviour
of OPSFRC beams was evident after the yielding of steel bars. According to the deflection data in Table
3, the difference between the deflection at the yield stage and the ultimate stage is found to be 4 mm
in the OPSC beam. However, in the OPSFRC beams, this margin is slightly extended to about 6–7 mm
irrespective of the volume fraction of steel fibres. After the steel bar yields, the load is not fully sustained
by the reinforcement but transferred from the bars to the concrete to achieve a new equilibrium (Hsu,
1968). The fibre–matrix interfacial bond in OPSFRC beams increased the load capacity of the concrete
thus improved the toughness within the yielding and ultimate stages.
For the post-ultimate load stage, the addition of steel fibres improved the ultimate compressive strain
which resulted in softened post-peak behaviours (Bencardino, Rizzuti, Spadea, & Swamy, 2008; Yang et
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND CIVIL ENGINEERING 9
al., 2012). It can be observed in Figure 4 that the addition of steel fibres produced a flattened curve for
the post-peak behaviours of the OPSFRC beams, while the OPSC exhibited a steep descending post-
peak curve. One of the indicative parameters to reveal the effect of steel fibre in post-peak behaviours
of concrete is the failure load to ultimate load ratio. The failure load to ultimate load ratios for OPSC,
OPSFRC-25, OPSFRC-50, OPSFRC-75 and OPSFRC-100 were .19, .69, .71, .66, .80 and .72, respectively.
When the OPSC beam failed, the beam achieved only 19% of its maximum load. Whereas for the OPSFRC
beams, the values of 66–80% of their ultimate load capacity show that steel fibre reinforcement signif-
icantly enhanced the post-ultimate load behaviours of OPSFRC reinforced members.
The post-peak behaviours of both OPSC and OPSFRC could also be compared using the P50/Pult ratio
for the load at constant deflection of 50 mm, as shown in Table 4. The deflection of 50 mm was chosen
as it was closest to the deflection prior to failure in OPSFRC-100 beam. The ratio of P50/Pult for OPSC
beam was found to be about 70% while higher value of about 90% was obtained for the OPSFRC beams.
This could be attributed to the crack bridging effect of steel fibre that requires additional energy to
pull the fibre out from the fractured cement matrix. This post-peak tensile stiffening mechanism sub-
stantially increases the post-cracking strength and ductility (Abu-Lebdeh, Hamoush, Heard, & Zornig,
2011; Hamoush et al., 2010; Okay & Engin, 2012; Singh et al., 2004).
Cd = 𝛿u ∕ 𝛿𝜀 .001 (5)
where Mu = moment capacity, Mε.001 = moment when tensile steel strain is .001, δu = deflection at
moment capacity and δε.001 = deflection when tensile steel strain is .001.
Meanwhile, in energy-based approach, ductility can be defined as a capacity of energy absorption
(Kim & Shin, 2011; Wang & Belarbi, 2011). Equations 6 and 7 show two examples to calculate the ener-
gy-based ductility ratio reported by Kim and Shin (2011).
𝜇E1 = AMu ∕AMyld (6)
where μE = energy-based ductility ratio up to ultimate moment, AMu = area of load–displacement curve
up to moment capacity and AMyld = area of load–displacement curve up tensile steel yields.
10 S. P. YAP ET AL.
Ratio to the con- Ratio to the con- Ratio to the con- Ratio to the con-
Beam μD trol specimen μD2 trol specimen μE1 trol specimen μE2 trol specimen
OPSC 11.43 – 8.51 – 8.96 – 4.71 –
OPSFRC-25 9.25 .81 11.66 1.37 9.30 1.04 5.70 1.21
OPSFRC-50 6.31 .55 12.11 1.42 6.34 .71 5.32 1.13
OPSFRC-75 7.85 .69 8.74 1.03 8.84 .99 4.18 .89
OPSFRC-100 4.58 .40 9.75 1.15 4.45 .50 4.72 1.00
Figure 7. Confinement effect of steel fibres when (a) low-volume fraction and (b) high-volume fraction.
were calculated from the area under the load–displacement curves (Dinh, Choi, & Kim, 2016). In this
study, the area under the curve was calculated using the trapezoidal area approximation method at
which the curve is broken up into multiple small trapeziums. The toughness is taken as the total area of
all trapeziums. The results show that the toughness of OPSFRC-25 and OPSFRC-50 beams improved by
3–6%; while the other two OPSFRC specimens show comparable toughness to that of OPSC beam. In
the case of OPSFRC, the effects of steel fibres enhance the toughness of both pre-peak and post-peak
behaviours. Hence, the ductility ratio, μE2 is more appropriate to indicate the energy-based ductility
of OPSFRC.
4. Conclusions
This study investigated the effects of steel fibres addition (.25% to 1.00% by volume) in the flexural
behaviour of OPSC. Based on the experimental results and discussions, the following conclusions are
drawn:
(6) Different ductility ratios are compared in this study. For the case of OPSFRC, the ductility ratio
calculation has to consider both the reduced deflection as well as the enhanced load capacity
of OPSFRC beams.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Funding
This work was supported by Bantuan Kecil Penyelidikan (BKP) titled ‘Development of waterproofing cement mortar using
plastic filling’ [Project Number: BK004-2016].
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