Steel fibre and transverse reinforcement effects on the behaviour of high strength concrete beams

An experimental program was carried out to investigate the influence of fibre reinforcement on the mechanical behaviour of high strength reinforced concrete beams. Eighteen beams, loaded in four-point bending tests, were examined by applying monotonically increasing controlled displacements and recording the response in terms of load-deflection curves up to failure. The major test variables were the volume fraction of steel fibres and the transverse steel amount for two different values of shear span. The contribution of the stirrups to the shear strength was derived from the deformations of their vertical legs, measured by means of strain gauges. The structural response of the tested beams was analyzed to evaluate strength, stiffness, energy absorption capacity and failure mode. The experimental results and observed behaviour are in good agreement with those obtained by other authors, confirming that an adequate amount of steel fibres in the concrete can be an alternative solution for minimizing the density of transverse reinforcement. However, the paper shows that the use of different theoretical or semi-empirical models, available in literature, leads to different predictions of the ultimate load in the case of dominant shear failure mode.