Bond behavior of lightweight steel fibre-reinforced concrete

This research was undertaken for studying the bond behaviour of Lightweight Fibre-reinforced Concrete (LWFC). Lightweight concrete is inherently weak in tension and has higher brittleness than the conventional concrete. To improve these and other properties, it is generally reinforced with deformed bars and fibres. There are number of studies that favour the use of Steel fibres, however such studies are mainly focused either on normal weight concrete or on the mechanical properties of different concretes. There are also different committee reports and in some cases specific sections of codes that specifically deal with the normal weight fibre-reinforced concrete. However, such is not the case with lightweight fibre-reinforced concrete; there is limited literature available especially on the Bond of lightweight fibre-reinforced concrete. In current research work effect of fibres is studied on the bond behaviour of the lightweight reinforced concrete. Since most of code provisions for bond are based on experimental work originally carried out on conventional concrete, effect of fibres on bond of conventional concrete was therefore also included in present research domain. Main bond tests were carried out using Pull-out test methodology. Test results indicate that the ultimate bond strength of conventional concrete when reinforced with steel fibres increased by 29%. However due to very low density and high porosity of lightweight aggregates, no significant improvement on bond strength of LWFC, as a result of fibres’ addition could be observed. Nevertheless, there is noteworthy improvement in the post-cracking bond strength of LWFC. Besides this, current bond-stress slip law as defined by Model Code 2010 does not reflect the positive effect of fibres, hence some modifications are suggested. It is also found that among the existing code expressions for estimation of bond strength, expression proposed by Model Code 2010 presents better results and its effectiveness can be further increased if fibre factor and factor for lightweight concrete are considered