Flexural behaviour of steel fibre reinforced concrete slabs

Concrete is a material that is good in compression but weak in tension. Enhancing the tensile properties of concrete will lead to its greater application in construction. It was reported that improvement in the mechanical properties of reinforced concrete structure can be done by the inclusion of short fibres. Steel fibres have been reported to be able to increase the toughness, abrasion, impact resistances and allow for decrease in concrete slab thickness. This paper focuses on a study conducted in the laboratory to investigate the behaviour of steel fibre reinforced concrete slab. Four reinforced concrete slabs with different parameters to be studied were cast and tested to failure. The concrete slabs cast consist of slab with reinforcement bar R-150, slab with reinforcement bar R-300 and 1% dosage of steel fibres, slab with 1% dosage of steel fibres, and one plain concrete slab. All the slabs cast having the overall size of 100 x 500 x 1000 mm, and tested to failure under four point loading. The behaviour of the concrete slabs was studied through their ultimate load, load deflection characteristic upon loading, cracking history, and mode of failure. The results indicated that the inclusion of steel fibres can increased the ultimate load of the sample and its ability to absorb more energy after cracking, i.e. the toughness, compared with the control slab. It also shows that the use of steel fibres can reduce to some extent the total area of steel reinforcement required in reinforced concrete slab such for ground slab application