Steel-fibre-reinforcement and increasing the load-bearing capacity of concrete pavements.

Elastic theories form the basic concept used in most of the existing design codes for industrial or transportation plain and conventionally reinforced concrete ground slabs. The post-cracking load bearing capacity of slabs-on-ground is not taken into account in most of these codes. Therefore, these codes (e.g. PCA, ACI) cannot be used directly for steel fibre reinforced concrete (SFRC). Guidelines for SFRC (e.g. Concrete Society) use the ultimate limit state concept for fibre reinforced ground floors, but only partially, since cracking is only allowed to occur on the bottom surface of the slab. The highly repetitive nature of the loads which may cause considerable degradation in the mechanical properties of the pavement and foundation also is not considered in this method. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the load-bearing capacity of SFRC pavements through numerical simulations, and to assess the accuracy of the analytical methods used in different design codes.