Published Paper Details:

Concrete is a brittle material which has a low strength and limited ductility. These weak points of concrete can be resolved by including fibers made of different materials with high technical specifications. This special type of concrete is known as Steel Fiber Reinforced Concrete (SFRC) which exhibits superior properties in terms of ductility, fracture energy, toughness, strength and durability due to the addition of steel fibers when compared to conventional concrete. SFRC has a varied application area. In practice, steel fibers which have different lengths, diameters, and aspect ratios are used. These variable characteristics of steel fibers have highly influence on the performance of SFRC.The paper presents results of an experimental investigation carried out to study the properties of reinforced cement concrete and steel fibre reinforced concrete (SFRC) containing mixed fibres of different aspect ratio. An experimental programme was planned in which workability tests were conducted to investigate the properties of the fresh concrete mixes. Meanwhile, the properties of the hardened concrete were investigated using compressive tests, split tensile tests and flexural strength tests. And effect of fibres when it is distributed in hinged zone of structural element was also examined to achieve economy by reducing steel fibre content in concrete mix. The results indicate that the Mixed steel fibre reinforced concrete (at volume fraction of 1.5%, consisting of 75% macro fibres and 25% micro fibres) can be adjusted as the most appropriate combination to be employed in SFRC for compressive strength, split tensile strength and flexural strength. However, better workability was obtained as the percentage of shorter fibres increased in the concrete mix. And there is little amount of variation in properties of concrete between fibres in full length of the beam and fibres in hinged zone of the beam.