Engineering Structures 21 (1999) 937–944

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Experimental and theoretical investigation on the shear of steel

fibre reinforced concrete beams
a,* b
D.H. Lim , B.H. Oh
a
Department of Civil Engineering, Dongseo University, San 69-1, Churae-2 Dong, Sasang-Ku, Pusan, 617-716, South Korea
b
Department of Civil Engineering, Seoul National University, San 56-1, Sillimdong, Kwanak-Ku, Seoul, 151-742, South Korea

Received 14 August 1997; received in revised form 23 March 1998; accepted 24 March 1998

Abstract

A total of nine beams have been tested to investigate the influence of fibre reinforcement on the mechanical behaviour of
reinforced concrete beams in shear. The major test variables are the volume fraction of steel fibres and the ratios of stirrups to the
required shear reinforcement. The test results show that the first crack shear strength increases significantly as fibre content increases
and the improvement in ultimate shear strength is also achieved. The present study indicates that fibre reinforcement can reduce
the amount of shear stirrups required and that the combination of fibres and stirrups may meet strength and ductility requirements.
An analytical method to predict the shear strength of reinforced concrete beams containing steel fibres is proposed and comparisons
made with the present test data as well as other data.  1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Steel fibre reinforced concrete; Cracking/ultimate shear strength; Ductility; Crack control

1. Introduction paper were carried out on concrete beams reinforced

When principal tensile stresses within the shear region
of a reinforced concrete beam exceed the tensile strength
of concrete, diagonal cracks develop in the beam,
eventually causing failure. The brittle nature of concrete
causes the collapse to occur shortly after the formation
of the first crack. The addition of steel fibres aids in
converting the brittle characteristics to a ductile one. The
principal role of fibres is resisting the formation and
growth of cracks by providing pinching forces at crack
tips. In addition, a marginal improvement in tensile
strength also results and fibre reinforced concrete has
higher ultimate strain than plain concrete. Many studies
[1–8] have been conducted to investigate the flexural
behaviour of steel fibre reinforced concrete beams. Many
studies [1,9–13,16,17] are also available on the shear
behaviour of reinforced concrete beams containing
steel fibres.
The purpose of the present study is therefore to
explore the shear characteristics of reinforced concrete
beams containing steel fibres. The tests reported in this
* Corresponding author.
with stirrups and steel fibres. The main purposes of the
present study are (1) to study the mechanical behaviour
of reinforced concrete beams containing steel fibres
under shear, (2) to study the potential use of fibres to
replace the stirrups, (3) to investigate combinations of
stirrups and steel fibres for improvements in ultimate and
shear cracking strengths as well as ductility. Based on
the present test results and earlier published studies
[9,12,13,16,17], a method of predicting ultimate shear
strength of beams, when reinforced with stirrups and
steel fibres, is proposed.
2. Design of test members
The present experimental program consists of testing
three series of reinforced concrete beams having ident-
ical rectangular cross sections of 100 ⫻ 180 mm. The
span length of the members is 1300 mm with a shear
span length of 400 mm. A total of nine beams were
tested to investigate the influence of fibre reinforcement
on the mechanical behaviour of reinforced concrete
beams in shear. The major test variables are the volume
fraction of steel fibres and the contents of shear stirrups.

0141-0296/99/$ - see front matter  1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 1 4 1 - 0 2 9 6 ( 9 8 ) 0 0 0 4 9 - 2
938 D.H. Lim, B.H. Oh / Engineering Structures 21 (1999) 937–944

Table 1
Test beam details and comparison of the experimental ultimate shear strength Vuo with predicted ultimate shear strength Vup

Identification
Stirrups Fibres fc⬘ (Mpa) fsp (Mpa) Vfo (Mpa) Vuo (Mpa) Vup (Mpa)
of beams

Spacing
␳s (%) l/d ␳f (%)
(mm)

S0.00V0 – 0 60 0 34.00 2.50 0.78 3.56 3.38

S0.50V0 8.0 50 60 0 34.00 2.50 1.09 5.35 5.34
S0.75V0 6.0 75 60 0 34.00 2.50 1.18 6.36 6.30
S1.00V0 4.0 100 60 0 34.00 2.50 1.25 7.00 7.77
S0.00V1 – 0 60 1 38.69 4.00 1.49 4.49 4.98
S0.50V1 8.0 50 60 1 38.69 4.00 1.69 5.73 7.00
S0.75V1 6.0 75 60 1 38.69 4.00 1.84 7.00 7.70
S0.00V2 – 0 60 2 42.40 5.10 1.81 5.73 6.36
S0.50V2 8.0 50 60 2 42.40 5.10 2.60 6.80 8.50

fc⬘ ⫽ compressive strength, fsp ⫽ splitting tensile strength, Vfo ⫽ cracking shear strength, Vuo ⫽ experimental ultimate shear strength, Vup ⫽
predicted ultimate shear strength, ␳s ⫽ relative percent value (%) to the required shear reinforcement, ␳f ⫽ fibre contents, l/d ⫽ aspect ratio.

The volume fraction of steel fibres were varied from 0%
to 2% and the ratios of stirrups from 0% to 100% of
the required shear reinforcement. Table 1 describes the
details of the beams and the major test variables.
2.1. Test materials, design and fabrication of members
In the preparation of the test members, the following
materials were used:
1. Ordinary Portland cement (TYPE I) was used in
these tests.
2. Gravel with a maximum aggregate size of 10 mm was
used with sand of fineness modulus of about 2.2 l.
3. Round straight steel fibres of 0.7 mm diameter, 42
mm length, and ultimate strength of 1784 Mpa
were used.
4. The aspect ratio of steel fibres is 60. The material
properties of steel fibres are summarized in Table 2.
5. Longitudinal deformed steel bars, 16 mm diameter
(tensile steel), 10 mm diameter (compressive steel)
with yield strength of 420 Mpa, were used, and 6
mm diameter deformed steel bars were also used for
stirrups only. The actual yield stress of the stirrups is
359 Mpa.
The mix was designed to obtain a compressive
strength of 35 MPa at 28 days, The aggregates, cement,
and water were batched by weight and mixed in a drum
mixer. The fibres were introduced last and dispersed uni-
formly. Although the fibrous mixes were less workable
than plain concrete, it is proved satisfactory in that the
dispersion of fibres was found to be uniform and there
was no significant fibre balling. The 100 ⫻ 200 mm con-
crete cylinder specimens for compressive and split-ten-
sile tests and 100 ⫻ 100 ⫻ 400 mm beam specimens
for flexural tests were also cast from the same mixes
used in the test members and compacted by vibration
table.
All test beams were vibrated by 25 mm diameter
internal poker vibrator until satisfactory compacted. Fol-
lowing casting, the concrete beams and control speci-
mens were covered with wet burlaps until demolding
after 24 h and curing in a water bath for 28 days.
2.2. Instrumentation and test procedures
The beams were tested under four-point loading con-
dition and the load was applied to the test beams as two
equal concentrated loads by means of steel spreader
beam (see Fig. 1). A calibrated load cell was placed
between the jack and spreader beam. Three dial gauges
of 0.01 mm accuracy were used to measure the deflec-
tions under increasing loads at several locations. Steel
strain gauges were attached on the longitudinal steel bars

Table 2
Material properties of steel bars and steel fibres

Modulus of elasticity ( ⫻ 105

Yield strength (Mpa) Tensile strength (Mpa)
Mpa)

Steel bars 420 545 2.0

Stirrups 359 534 2.0
Steel fibres 1303 1784 2.0
 D.H. Lim, B.H. Oh / Engineering Structures 21 (1999) 937–944
Fig. 1. Test set up and the locations of strain gauges.
and stirrups, and concrete strain gauges were attached
for monitoring strains in the concrete. Location of the
instrumentation is shown in Fig. 1.
The loads were applied, step by step in small
increments up to the ultimate load. The load of
increment used is 0.5 ton. All the increment readings
were automatically scanned and stored in the computer
at each load.
3. Test results and discussion
3.1. Strength properties of fibre-reinforced concrete
3.1.1. Compressive strength
Fig. 2 shows a comparison of the relative strengths
corresponding to the various fibre contents. The com-
pressive strength increased by about 25% when fibres
were introduced into the concrete by up to 2% by vol-
ume. The actual strengths obtained are summarized in
Table 1.
3.1.2. Flexural strength
The present tests indicate that the flexural strength of
concrete is greatly enhanced due to the addition of steel
Fig. 2. Comparison of the various relative strengths due to the
addition of steel fibres.
939
fibres. The increase in flexural strength was about 55%
when the fibre content was increased to from 0% to 2%
(see Fig. 2). One other more important characteristic in
flexural behaviour is that the fibre reinforced concrete
showed remarkable ductility and energy absorption
capacity.
3.1.3. Splitting tensile strength
From Fig. 2, it can be seen that splitting tensile
strength was more than doubled when 2% fibre volume
was used. This increase is the highest for the three
strengths mentioned so far. This means that the steel
fibres enhanced significantly the tensile properties of
concrete and improve the resistance to cracking.
3.2. Modes of failure
All the beams exhibited similar linear behaviour from
initial loading up to the occurrence of the first hair-line
crack. Beams S0.00V0, which have no shear reinforce-
ment, failed soon after the formation of the diagonal
crack. The appearance of the first crack was almost
instantaneous, as can be expected. The cracks initiated
and progressed along the compressive stress trajectories
in the shear span and led very rapidly to a catastrophic
type of failure. On the other hand, beams with fibre
reinforcement (beams S0.00V1, S0.00V2) continued to
resist higher shear stress, exhibiting considerable duc-
tility. The mode of failure changed from shear to flexural
as the fibre contents increased, shown as S0- beam ser-
ies. Ductility was also enhanced significantly with the
addition of fibres. It can be also seen that beams with
50% conventional code required stirrups and 1% steel
fibre contents exhibited a flexural mode of failure. The
modes of failure are shown in Fig. 3. It can be seen that
a fibre content of 1% appears to be the critical point
in transferring the failure mode from shear mode to a
flexural one.
In beam with stirrups but without steel fibres
(S0.50V0, S0.75V0 and S1.00V0), some spalling
occurred at ultimate. But the inclusion of steel fibres
eliminated the occurrence of concrete spalling: steel
fibres enhanced the capacity of the matrix to hold
together during the post cracking stage, thus preventing
spalling even at failure.
3.3. Load-deflection characteristics
The load-deflection curves of the test beams are
shown in Figs. 4–6. It can be seen that all the beams
exhibit linear behaviour from initial loading up to the
occurrence of the first crack. After the formation of
cracks, all the beams exhibited nonlinear load-deflec-
tion characteristics.
A comparison of the peak deflections at ultimate loads
reveals that there is marginal improvement in the duc-
940 D.H. Lim, B.H. Oh / Engineering Structures 21 (1999) 937–944

Fig. 3. Failure modes of test beams.

Fig. 4. Load-deflection curves for the beams without stirrups. Fig. 5. Load-deflection curves for the beams with 50% of conven-
tional stirrups.
 D.H. Lim, B.H. Oh / Engineering Structures 21 (1999) 937–944
Fig. 6. Load-deflection curves for the beams with 75% of conven-
tional stirrups.
tility due to the use of fibres. Beams without stirrups
exhibited significant improvement in the ultimate
strength due to the addition of steel fibres (Fig. 4), whilst
beams with stirrups (Figs. 5 and 6) exhibited smaller
improvement in ultimate strength.
3.4. Cracking shear strength
One predominant effect of steel fibres is to increase
the shear cracking strength. Generally the shear cracking
strength of fibre reinforced concrete is higher than that
of conventional reinforced concrete. Fig. 7 shows the
variation of shear cracking strength with fibre contents.
It can be seen that the inclusion of fibre increases shear
cracking strength significantly. This indicates that it is
more effective to increase the shear cracking strength
and ductility through the addition of more steel fibres.
Fig. 7. Cracking shear strength according to the fibre contents.
941
3.5. Ultimate shear strength
Fig. 8 shows ultimate shear strength vs fibre contents
of the beam tested. It can be seen that fibre reinforced
concrete beams exhibited similar improvements in ulti-
mate shear strength compared with the companion
beams without fibres. Fibre contents of up to 2%
employed in the beams, showed small improvement in
ultimate shear strength. However, mentioned earlier, as
the volume of fibre increases, improvements in shear
cracking strength is significant compared with com-
panion beams without fibres and with only stirrups.
From these test results, it can be concluded that
through the addition of fibre reinforcement, we can
reduce the amount of shear stirrups required. An opti-
mum combination of steel fibres and shear stirrups may
be arrived at the required strength and ductility. It is
possible that 50–75% of conventional stirrups, together
with 1% of fibre volume contents may be an optimum
for the beam tested.
4. Shear analysis of reinforced concrete beams
containing steel fibres
To formulate the equilibrium condition for a loaded
fibre reinforced concrete beam, it is necessary to identify
all external and internal actions that may be present. Fig.
9 shows the free body diagram of a part of the shear
span of a simply supported fibre reinforced concrete
beam. From this figure, the total shear forces can be writ-
ten as follows:
V ⫽ Vc ⫹ Va ⫹ Vd ⫹ Vf (1)
where Vc is the shearing force across the compression
zone; Va is the interlocking force; Vd is the dowel action
Fig. 8. Ultimate shear strength according to the fibre contents.
942 D.H. Lim, B.H. Oh / Engineering Structures 21 (1999) 937–944

From Eq. (6), we can determine a (stress block depth),

and the neutral axis depth is calculated as c ⫽ a/␤.
Referring to Fig. 9, the length of the inclined shear
crack is equal to (h ⫺ c)sin␣, and the area through which
the steel fibres contribute to shear resistance of the beam
is b(h ⫺ c)/sin␣. The number of fibres crossing a unit
area of the crack may be taken, as proposed by Hann-
ant [15],

Fig. 9. Free body diagram of a part of shear span of a simply sup-
ported fibre reinforced concrete beam.
force; and Vf is the vertical components of the fibre pull
out force along the inclined crack.
Considering the shear resistance of concrete without
web reinforcement, the equation for ultimate shear
strength in MPa can be written as suggested by Zsutty
[14], as follows:
vf
N ⫽ 0.5 (7)
␲r2f
where vf is the volume fraction of fibre and rf is the
radius of fibre.
At failure, fibre pull-out invariably occurs, since the
fibre length (lf) is usually less than the critical length
necessary to develop the ultimate tensile strength of
fibre, and also due to displacement of two faces of the
crack. Since failure is by fibre pull-out, it has been
shown that the mean fibre pull-out length is lf/4. The
average pull-out force, f, is given by:

冉
Vuc ⫽ 10␳f ⬘c
d
as冊 1
3
for
as
d
ⱖ 2.5 (2) f ⫽ ␶␲df
lf
4
(8)

Vuc ⫽ (160␳f ⬘c) 13冉冊 d

as
4
3
for
as
d
ⱕ 2.5 (3) where ␶ is the average bond strength; and df is the diam-
eter of steel fibre.
The ultimate shear stress sustained by a unit area of
where ␳ is the longitudinal reinforcement ratio; fc⬘ is the crack at failure is therefore given by:
compressive strength of concrete (Mpa); d is the effec-
tive depth (m); and as is the shear span (m). lf
For beams with web reinforcement, the equation of ␴cu ⫽ N f ⫽ N␶␲df (9)
4
ultimate shear strength in Mpa may be written as fol-
lows:
Substituting Eq. (7) into Eq. (9), the following equ-

冉 冊 1
ation is obtained for ␴cu:
d Av fy as
Vuc ⫽ 10␳f ⬘c 3
⫹ for ⱖ 2.5 (4)
as sb d lf
␴cu ⫽ 0.5␶Vf (10)

冉冊 4
df
d Av fy as
Vuc ⫽ (160␳f ⬘c) 13 3
⫹ for ⱕ 2.5 (5)
as sb d The total force (F) perpendicular to the crack is there-
fore:
where Av is the area of stirrups; fy is the yield strength
of stirrup; and s is the spacing of stirrups. F ⫽ ␴cub(h ⫺ c)/sin ␣ (11)
To estimate the contribution of steel fibres to the total
shear resistance, the neutral axis depth (c) has to be cal-
The vertical component of this force is equal to the
culated first. The external moment (Vu as) must be equal
increase in shear resistance of the beam due to the pres-
to internal ultimate resisting moment Mu.
ence of steel fibres and is equal to:
Mu ⫽ Vu as (6)
Vuf ⫽ F sin ␣ ⫽ ␴cub(h ⫺ c) (12)

冉 冊
⫽ 0.85f ⬘cab d ⫺
a
2
⫹ A⬘sfy(d ⫺ d⬘) for
as
d
ⱖ 2.5
The total shear strength of fibre reinforced concrete
beams can be calculated as the sum of Vuc and Vuf, i.e.:
where d⬘ is the distance from the compression fibre to
the centroid of compression steel. Vu ⫽ Vuc ⫹ Vuf (13)
 D.H. Lim, B.H. Oh / Engineering Structures 21 (1999) 937–944
5. Comparisons between theoretical predictions and
test results
Table 1 and Fig. 10 represent the results of the com-
parison between the experimental ultimate shear strength
Vuo with predicted ultimate shear strength Vup given by
the method herein. The method proposed gives accept-
able results.
The mean value of the ratio of the experimental ulti-
mate shear strength to predicted ultimate shear strength
for the beams tested was about 0.92, with a standard
deviation of 0.08 and coefficient of variation of 8.7%.
6. Conclusions
An investigation into the behaviour of reinforced con-
crete beams containing steel fibres subjected predomi-
nantly to shear is presented. A total of nine beams were
tested to investigate the influence of fibre reinforcement
on the mechanical behaviour of reinforced concrete
beams in shear. The major test variables are the content
of steel fibres and the volume of shear stirrups. The fibre
volumes were varied from 0% to 2% by volume and the
amount of stirrups varied from zero to the amount of the
required shear reinforcement.
From the present experimental and analytical study on
the shear behaviour of steel fibre reinforced concrete
beams, the following conclusions may be drawn.
1. The addition of steel fibres increases the compressive
strength, flexural strength and tensile splitting
strength, and the increase is greatest in tensile split-
ting strength. Steel fibres can greatly enhance the ten-
sile properties of concrete and improve resistance
to cracking.
2. The mode of failure changed from shear to flexure
when the volume fraction of steel fibres used exceeds
Fig. 10. Comparison of the experimental ultimate shear strength Vuo
with the predicted ultimate shear strength Vup.
943
a certain amount, namely about 1% in this study. This
means that the addition of fibre reinforcement
increases shear capacity greatly.
3. Cracking shear strength increased significantly, about
twofold, due to the addition of fibres when fibre con-
tents used was 1%. Thus, the addition of fibres is
effective in controlling shear cracks.
4. The use of fibre reinforcement can reduce the amount
of shear stirrups required and a combination of fibres
and stirrups may satisfy strength and ductility
requirements.
5. An analytical method to predict the shear strength of
reinforced concrete beams containing steel fibres is
presented. The method will allow shear analysis of
reinforced concrete structural members containing
steel fibres.
Acknowledgements
This paper was partially supported by Research Fund
of Dongseo University, Korea, 1998.
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