Self-compacting steel fibre reinforced concrete: material characterization and real scale test up to failure of a pile supported flat slab

Steel Fibre Reinforced Concrete (SFRC) is increasingly being used in the construction industry providing structural, technological and economic benefits. However, this relatively new material has not demonstrated its full potential due to presence of certain aspects related to both concrete mix and structural design that should be further investigated. Specifically, pile-supported flat slabs is an interesting field of application of the SFRC; however, there are still aspects needing attention and solutions in order to make this structural application more attractive from both economic and technical points of view, these being (among others): the effect of new types of fibres on material properties and more insight regarding the structural capacity at both serviceability and ultimate limit state. Complementing the existing knowledge in aforementioned areas might lead to considerable expansion of SFRC application in elements with high structural responsibility. To this end, an extensive experimental program was carried out within the industrial-oriented project eFIB that contained characterization of 15 concrete mixes with different fibre types and its content (up to 120 kg/m3) and construction of 10×12 m SFRC flat slab. This prototype was loaded in different stages with permanent and life-loads in order to study both cracking and time deformation responses; the structure was eventually led to failure. The results of the described research are presented and discussed herein.The authors wish to express their gratitude to the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness for the financial support in the scope of the project eFIB (reference: RTC-2016-5236-5) which was carried out along with SACYR Ingeniería e Infraestruturas. The first author also thanks the Department of Enterprise and Education of Catalan Government for providing support through the PhD Industrial Fellowship (2018 DI 77) in collaboration with Smart Engineering Ltd.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version