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Optimization of steel rebar and fibre contents in Ultra-high- performance

concrete beam

Technical Report · January 2023

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.19215.05283

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Wuhan University of Technology
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 Optimization of steel rebar and fibre contents in Ultra-high-
performance concrete beam

Abdul Ghani* Peiping Li* Jehangir Alam1 Amir Hamza Khan1 Mehran Ahmad1
*School of Civil Engineering and Architecture Wuhan University of Technology, China.
1 Department of Civil Engineering, University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar

KEYWORDS ABSTRACT

Ultra-high-performance fibre- Ultra-high-performance fibre reinforced concrete (UHPFRC) is one of the most advanced concrete in the
reinforced concrete, field of construction, with very high strength compared to ordinary concrete. It is more effective in
Optimization, mechanical properties and durability. This review study provides a brief foundation for the UHPFRC beam
beam. with the optimization of steel rebars (R-UHPFRC). Compressive strength, tensile flexural strength and beam
cracking are studied in this review.

1. Introduction:
Concrete is the most widely used material in the world. Mainly the
use of concrete is increasing day by day. Concrete comprises coarse
aggregate, sand, pozzolanic material, mineral admixture and a
binder like cement and lime. Concrete is used in dams, canals,
buildings, roads and bridges, etc.; in the frame building structure,
concrete is used in slabs, beams and columns, and concrete is weak
in tension and stronger in compression (Min, Yao, and Jiang 2014).
With the usage of concrete, development is also occurring in
construction and engineering. For special purposes, concrete is
prepared by using different pozzolanic materials and admixtures.
Steel fibre is used in concrete to increase the compressive and tensile
properties of the structural members like beams, columns, slabs or
any other structural member. This special concrete is called UHPC.
In many countries, more work has been done on UHPC (Yoo and
Banthia 2017). UHPC is a widely used concrete type in building
components, bridges, repairs and rehabilitations, architectural parts
of the structure, and vertical components such as windmills towers
and utility towers to oil and gas industrial applications, offshore
structures and hydraulic structures. Among all these structures,
roads and bridges is the most popular application of UHPC(Voo,
Foster, and Pek 2017). Many countries have started the usage of the
UHPC, like China, Australia, the USA, Canada, France, Germany,
Japan, Italy, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Korea, Slovenia and
Switzerland (Azmee and Shafiq 2018).many studies have been
performed because Ultra high-performance fibre reinforced
concrete (UHPFRC) is a meagre water-to-cement ratio (W/C), high
volume content of steel fibre, and high fines admixture give an
excellent mechanical performance, energy absorption capacity,
fatigue and durability enhancement(Yoo, Kang, and Yoon 2014).
Aside from all these properties, UHPC is mainly using for high
strength of tensile and bending loading in civil infrastructural
structures. In the study (Yoo and Yoon 2015), the elastic modulus,
compressive strength, and flexural performance, including flexural
strength and deflection capacity, are improved by a considerable
amount. Using either twisted or smooth steel fibre can help in
material performance. The cracking load and corresponding
deflection load in the UHPC beam were reduced due to the addition
of steel fibre, and post-cracking stiffness and load-carrying capacity
was improved. Ductility was found to be low by adding fibres. K
Wille (Wille, El-Tawil, and Naaman 2014) studied nine different
UHPFRCs of performance level 4 of direct tensile were investigated
and concluded a strong dependency on fibre content. Three types of
fibre were used in this study smooth, hooked and twisted. The result
showed a little difference in the tensile strength, strain at peak and
strength, energy absorption, and high flexibility. This experimental
work shows the material's high flexibility and energy-absorbing
capacity, which can be effective in high-strain rate applications like
blast and impact loads. A study (Zhang, Shao, and Zhu 2020) has
been carried out to study the behaviour of concrete by using a dog
bone-shaped concrete material having two types of members one is
UHPFRC without steel bar, and the other is R-UHPFRC. In
comparing both, the increase in fibre fraction from 2% to 3.5% by
volume in R-UHPFRC, the strain hardening is increasing for more
fibre content. As the fibre content increases from 2% to 3.5%, the
peak strength and first visible cracking vary between 8.5% to 8.7%,
while the tensile stiffness improves by 5.0% to 8.7% depending on
bar size and steel ratio. A higher steel ratio increases the tensile
behaviour, especially the peak strength of R-UHPFRC increases
from 2.8 to 5.1 times with an increasing steel ratio compared to the
same specimen of UHPFRC with the same fibre content volume.
The load-carrying capacity of steel rebar is fully utilized during the
tension stiffening process of R-UHPFRC with immense cracking.
The use of steel bars in UHPFRC is very effective in strain
hardening capacity and increases the member's pre-peak tensile
ductility. With increasing steel ratio, the post-peak tensile ductility
also improves in R-UHPFRC. The study concludes that increasing
the steel fibre content may increase the tensile behaviour
significantly in R-UHPFRC. Still, it is technically feasible and
economically viable to place a steel bars to reduce the steel fibre
contents in concrete without deteriorating the tensile strength.
Ahmad et al (Ahmed, Mallick, and Abul Hasan 2016) studied the
effect of the size of specimen on flexural tensile strength of concrete.
They concluded that concrete member size have significant effect
on strength, they proposed an equation incorporating the effect of
size of concrete for predicting the flexural tensile strength of

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concrete. Thus by adding steel fibre to UHPC and also the
optimization of steel bar in beam (showed in the fig 1) may also
contribute in the strength enhancement and improving the other

Table 1: compressive strength

From the above studies, it is clear that the compressive behaviour of

UHPFRC with steel bars optimization would also be improved.
Because separate usage of steel fibre in UHPC may improve the
compressive strength, steel bar optimization also enhances the
strength. Therefore the combined effect would also be practical.

properites of concrete beam. 2.2. Flexural Tensile strength:

Figure 1: optimized steel bars in the beam

2. Discussion:
This review paper includes comparing compressive strength,
flexural tensile strength and cracking of R-UHPFRC beam from
different past research papers.
2.1. Compressive strength:
(Abbas, Nehdi, and Saleem 2016) Studied that the compressive
strength depends upon the specimen size, shape, pre-treatment,
casting direction, loading rate and steel fibres used in the UHPFRC.
It was observed that by adding steel fibre, the failure mode of the
specimen changed from direct failure or explosion to a ductile
behaviour where the specimen is intact without chipping and
spalling effect (El-Dieb 2009). Many researchers concluded that
adding dense fibre content may not increase the compressive
strength due to the dense steel fibre content creating fibre bundling,
which leads to weak spots and can reduce the efficiency of steel fibre.
A slight increase in compressive strength can be observed with
proper heat treatment while adding steel fibre contents. This mainly
depends on the fibre types and their dosage; for example, in the
study of (Soutsos, Millard, and Karaiskos 2005) 30% increase in
observed compressive strength by adding 2.5% of the total volume
of steel fibre were subjected to thermal treatment. Furthermore, it
was reported from the (Abbas, Nehdi, and Saleem 2016) study that
adding fibre resulted in less entrapped air content leading to
improved density and higher compressive strength obtained.
(Raouache et al. 2018) A flexural test on a short beam was carried
out to investigate the strength of concrete, the stirrup's inclination
and the stirrup's position shown in figure 1. As a result, concluded
in the study that the incline stirrup contributes to the tensile flexural
strength, followed by the length of stirrup spacing and the strength
of the concrete. Maximum flexural strength was obtained when the
stirrup spacing was 10.71cm, with a concrete strength of 27.60MPa
and an incline between stirrups of 58.94°. UHPFRC significantly
improve elasticity and improve flexibility by increasing steel fibre
content. At the same time, the tensile strength in the strained zone is
reached quickly when conventional or pre-stressed reinforcement is
not used (Ćirović et al. 2014). It is seen in table 2 that tensile flexural
behaviour is improving with fibre content experimentally proved
that increase by 100% in tensile strength for UHPC specimens
reinforced with a #5(D16) bar (ρt=0.9%) and about 50% for the
specimen reinforce with #6, #7 and #8 bars and (ρt is between 1.3%
to 2.3%). This can be attributed to the bridging effect of fibres in the
concrete, which help the embedded rebar transfer tension across the
cracking (Hung, Lee, and Chan 2019).
Table 2: tensile strength

In a study (Kamal et al. 2014) 60-litre mixer was used for the mixing
of three mixes of concrete based on the compressive strength
criterion. 10% silica fume was replaced by cement, 0.5%
superplasticizer, 40 and 1kg/m3 steel fibre and polypropylene fibre
were used. Nine cubes were cast of different mixes to determine the
compressive strength of the concrete having steel fibre content; from
this result, the compressive strength is increased with steel fibre
content shown in table 1.

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 Figure 2: tensile vs strain Curve

2.3. Cracking:

The cracking pattern and failure mood in a study (Raouache et al.

2018) of 11 beams are presented according to the strength of the
concrete, and spacing is stirrup, inclination stirrup, and the initial
stiffness of the overall specimen were different, which is shown in
table 3. The failure mode of the specimens is shown in figure 3. Two
different failure modes were observed in the study, one is a diagonal
splitting failure, and the second one is a shear failure. Diagonal split
failure occurs when a diagonal crack propagates toward the load and
then toward the supports. Diagonal failure was less brittle than the
shear failure shown in table 3. Shear failure occurs when a diagonal
crack propagates in the shear span causing higher stresses in the
compression zone above the crack, which result in an explosive
failure shown in figure 3.

3. Conclusion:

This review paper is a brief study of UHPFRC and R-UHPFRC

beams from which we concluded that the beam prepared from the
UHPFRC with optimization of the steel bars could give us the
following results:

 The compressive strength may improve with increasing

steel fibres and by changing the position is tie bars and
main bars.

 The flexural tensile strength increases with increasing

fibre contents in the R-UHPFRC beam. The main aim of
the R-UHPFRC is improving flexural tensile behaviour.

 Ductility may improve by adding steel fibre content and

reinforced bar optimization.

Table 3: Reinforcement details and failure

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Figure 3: crack pattern of Beam

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 4. My previous Research Paper
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42452-020-03349-
y?fbclid=IwAR2dXHU0fN-
G_5_fBiue4hX3j_I0LDbREeOUJm4csbheuHz85Cqjvg43HFk
5. References
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Performance Concrete: Mechanical Performance, Durability,
Sustainability and Implementation Challenges." International
Journal of Concrete Structures and Materials 10 (3): 271–95.
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Ahmed, Mohd, Javed Mallick, and Mohd Abul Hasan. 2016. "A
Study of Factors Affecting the Flexural Tensile Strength of
Concrete." Journal of King Saud University - Engineering
Sciences 28 (2): 147–56.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jksues.2014.04.001.
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Concrete: From Fundamental to Applications." Case Studies in
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Ćirović, Goran, Vlastimir Radonjanin, Milan Trivunić, and
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