Structural behaviour of ultra high performance fibre reinforced concrete beams with steel and polymer bar reinforcement

Abstract

In this study, ultra high performance fibre reinforced concrete, UHPFRC, beams with internal bar reinforcement are tested. The objective is to investigate the flexure behaviour of developed UHPFRC material in full scale structural members. Five full scale beams of, ., m span, reinforced with different reinforcing materials are tested under four point bending. The flexural capacities, load displacement behaviour, cracking and failure pattern is obtained from the test results. The beams with steel reinforcement exhibited ductile failure. The fibres effectively resisted the opening of the cracks. The ultimate failure of beams is due to the rupture of reinforcing bars. The numerical models are developed for the tested beams for which concrete damaged plasticity model is adopted to simulate the material behaviour of UHPFRC. The material parameters required for the constitutive model is identified by conducting material tests under tension and compression. The developed numerical models are validated with the experimental results obtained from full-scale beam tests. The results obtained from the developed numerical models are in good agreement with the experimental data.