October  2009  

Effect of steel fibres and longitudinal reinforcement in effective moment of inertia of reinforced high strength fibrous concrete beams

J. Premalatha and R. Sundara Rajan

Steel fibre reinforced concrete is increasingly used as a construction material. Studies show that steel fibres can be used to increase the flexural rigidity (EI) of the concrete beams. In this experimental work eighteen beams with 80 MPa compressive strength and having tension and compression reinforcement and deformed steel fibres were tested under two point loading. The flexural rigidity of cracked rectangular reinforced concrete beams with steel fibres was evaluated experimentally. Considering the steel fibres influence compression and tension reinforcement (longitudinal reinforcement), a change in ACI Building code method for estimating the effective moment of inertia of the section for the Reinforced High Strength Fibrous Concrete (RHSFC) beams is proposed.1 The effective moment of inertia estimated using the changed method was compared with the experimental results. Good agreement existed for the predicted deflections with the experimental deflections of all the eighteen beams with different quantities of steel fibres and different longitudinal reinforcement ratio.



















Structural behaviour of hybrid fibre reinforced concrete beams

G. Mohankumar and L. Bangaru Chandran

Combination of high modulus metallic fibres and low modulus synthetic fibres incorporated in conventional reinforced concrete (hybrid fibre reinforced concrete) HFRC exhibit high performance. An attempt has been made to study the flexural response both by preliminary studies as well as static loading on beams of HFRC. HFRC beams having 1 % fibre fraction with five different combinations of steel and polyolefin fibres were cast and tested. The improvement in the material properties and structural performance of beams was significant. Based on the experimental results, the optimum fibre ratio of steel and polyolefin fibres is reported.



















Natural rubber latex modified fibre concrete - Initial studies for structural performance

R.Sreekala, K.Muthumani, K.Sathish Kumar and N.Gopalakrishnan

Safety and performance requirements of building structures have necessitated the development of High Performance Concretes in the recent years. Polymer modified fibre concrete assumes an important place in this regard. Ductility of reinforced concrete elements can be taken advantage of for design of structures against seismic load. Polymer modified fibre concretes are ideal for such applications with their inherent structural characteristics. Initially a study on the stress-strain behaviour has been carried out on different types of concretes namely plain high strength concrete, fibre concrete and the natural rubber latex modified fibre concrete with varying percentages of latex by testing under uni-axial compression. Selecting Natural Rubber Latex Modified Fibre Concrete (NRLMC) an experimental investigation has been undertaken to understand the flexural behaviour of natural rubber latex modified fibre concrete beams. Analytical modelling of the beams was carried out in user friendly finite element software to predict the monotonic behaviour of the beams.



















Studies on fibre reinforced prepacked concrete

Lalu Mangal, Arun Edwin and S. Suresh

Prepacked concrete is prepared by first placing the coarse aggregate into the formwork and then injecting cement-sand grout, with a grout fluidiser added, to fill the voids between the aggregate particles, either by gravity penetration or by injection under pressure. The present study investigates the essential properties of fibre reinforced prepacked concrete such as compressive strength, split tensile strength, flexural strength, modulus of elasticity and Poisson's ratio, to establish the suitability for its use as a construction material. Based on the study, it is concluded that prepacked fibre reinforced concrete has definite advantage over ordinary concrete for use in normal construction.



















Durability studies on glass fibre SCC

P. Srinivasa Rao, Seshadri Sekhar. T and P. Sravana

Experiments were conducted to study the effect of glass fibres on the durability parameters of self compacting concrete (SCC). Permeability, loss in compressive strength and weights were evaluated. Durability of M30, M40 , M50 and M60 grades of concrete immersed in H2SO4, HCl and Na2 SO4 solutions for 28, 56, 90 and 180 days were also evaluated. The test methods for finding out the rheology of fresh SCC included aeration measure. Several mixtures were used for Slump Flow, V-Funnel and L-box for proportioning of ingredients and admixtures for both with and without glass fibre concretes. It was noted that adding glass fibres improved durability of self-compacting concrete. The weight and compressive strength losses in cube specimens reduced with age and in general the durability indicators of glass fibre self-compacting concrete mixes were more than those of the self-compacting concrete mixes.