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Steel Fiber-Reinforced Concrete Beams—Part I: Material Characterization

and In-Service Behavior

Article  in  Aci Structural Journal · March 2019

DOI: 10.14359/51713288

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Ali Amin R. I. Gilbert

The University of Sydney UNSW Sydney
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 ACI STRUCTURAL JOURNAL
Title No. 116-S33
Steel Fiber-Reinforced Concrete Beams—Part I: Material
Characterization and In-Service Behavior
by Ali Amin and R. Ian Gilbert
A major revision to the Australian Standard for the design of rein-
forced concrete bridges was released in early 2017. This is one
of the first standards in the world to include robust and rational
design procedures for the design of steel fiber-reinforced concrete
(SFRC) one-way members. This and the accompanying paper that
follows are aimed toward practicing structural engineers to provide
a detailed understanding of the different parameters to be calcu-
lated in the standard and describe why they are important. A funda-
mental understanding of the behavior of SFRC at the material
level is required before it can be routinely used in structures. Only
when the material constitutive relationship for SFRC is deter-
mined with confidence can the material be reliably incorporated
into structural elements. In this paper, the constitutive relationship
for SFRC in tension is quantified and procedures for determining
the instantaneous deflections and crack widths of SFRC beams
are developed.
Keywords: crack widths; deflections; material characterization, service-
ability, steel fiber.
INTRODUCTION
The adoption of steel fibers embedded in concrete in
construction practice has substantially grown over the past
two decades. The primary objective of the fibers is to bridge
the cracks in concrete once they form and, hence, provide
some post-cracking resistance in tension. Applications of the
material are now common practice in the Australian infra-
structure sector for industrial jointless pavements, sprayed
tunnel shotcrete linings, and some residential load-bearing
elements. Recent research has shown that steel fibers have
the capacity to improve the strength and service behavior of
steel-concrete composite slabs.1 In Europe and Asia, steel
fibers are now being used as the sole primary reinforcement
in residential suspended slabs. Steel fibers are also used to
replace conventional bar reinforcement in carrying shear and
bursting stresses in large span (~100 m) prestressed bridges.
Despite the increased awareness of the benefits of steel
fibers by both practitioners and researchers, the use of steel
fiber-reinforced concrete (SFRC) in Australia has largely
been limited to noncritical members, even though signifi-
cant potential exists for full or partial replacement of costly,
manually placed, steel bar reinforcement. The benefits from
this stand point are multifaceted. Consider for instance the
replacement of layers of welded wire reinforcement, or rein-
forcing bar, or steel ligatures for shear reinforcement with an
equivalent dosage of SFRC, which is mixed directly into the
concrete and them pumped to elevated slabs and beams. This
would improve mobility of materials on site, and personnel
safety. Further, SFRC systems have the potential to improve
architectural freedom, allowing for non-orthogonal shapes
ACI Structural Journal/March 2019
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TECHNICAL PAPER
and floor plans, which may otherwise be difficult with rein-
forcing bar layouts and formwork systems.
Fundamentally, the slow take-up of this material comes
down to two issues. The first is that standardized proce-
dures for the design of SFRC have not been developed and,
as a result, practicing engineers have little design guidance.
Test methods that can correctly and accurately establish the
constitutive behavior of the material are required. The most
important property when considering the design of a struc-
tural member manufactured with SFRC is its post-cracking, or
residual, tensile strength. Only when the material constitutive
relationships for SFRC are determined with confidence can
the material be reliably incorporated into structural elements.
This links to the second issue associated with the slow take-up
of SFRC. In general, practitioners are uncomfortable with the
idea of relying on randomly placed fibers to provide post-
cracking strength in bending or direct tension. This is an issue
of engineering confidence, a by-product of the conservative
nature of the structural engineering community and it cannot
be solved fully by the publication of a single paper.
A catalyst in promoting this material to structural practi-
tioners, however, is the establishment of physical mechan-
ical models that can accurately explain and predict the mate-
rial’s response to a variety of load cases (gravity, fire). For
SFRC, these models should be versatile enough to handle
a range of inputs (fiber type, specimen geometry, loading
conditions) yet simple enough for routine use in structural
design. An engineer should be able to give physical signif-
icance to the different parameters being calculated and
understand why they are important. This has been addressed
recently for SFRC in the publication of the fib Model Code
20102 and  the Australian Bridge Code for Concrete Struc-
tures (AS 5100.5-2017).3
This paper first describes the softening behavior of SFRC
cracked in tension at a material constitutive level. Expres-
sions are presented herein for determining the key mate-
rial properties required for the design of SFRC structural
members. Next, a description of tension stiffening pertaining
to SFRC is given and how this can be included in the calcu-
lation of instantaneous deflections and for crack control
under in-service conditions. In an accompanying paper,4 the
behavior of SFRC in flexure and shear is described and a fully
worked design example is provided to illustrate the steps in
ACI Structural Journal, V. 116, No. 2, March 2019.
MS No. S-2017-473.R2, doi: 10.14359/51713288, was received May 9, 2018, and
reviewed under Institute publication policies. Copyright © 2019, American Concrete
Institute. All rights reserved, including the making of copies unless permission is
obtained from the copyright proprietors. Pertinent discussion including author’s
closure, if any, will be published ten months from this journal’s date if the discussion
is received within four months of the paper’s print publication.
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