Damage and stiffness research on steel shape steel fiber reinforced concrete composite beams

In this work, an experimental research has been performed on Steel Fiber-Steel Reinforced Concrete (SFSRC)specimens subjected to four-point bending tests to evaluate the feasibility of mutual replacement of steel fibers and conventional reinforcement through studying failure modes, load-deflection curves, stiffness of characteristic points, stiffness degradation curves and damage analysis. The variables considered in this experiment included steel fiber volume percentage with and without conventional reinforcements (stirrups or steel fibers) with shear span depth ratios of S/D=2.5 and 3.5. Experimental results revealed that increasing the volume percentage of steel fiber decreased the creation and propagation of shear and bond cracks, just like shortening the stirrups spacing. Higher crack resistance and suturing ability of steel fiber can improve the stability of its bearing capacity. Both steel fibers and stirrups improved the stiffness and damage resistance of specimens where stirrups played an essential role and therefore, the influence of steel fibers was greatly weakened. Increasing S/D ratio also weakened the effect of steel fibers. An equation was derived to calculate the bending stiffness of SFSRC specimens, which was used to determine mid span deflection; the accuracy of the proposed equation was proved by comparing predicted and experimental results.