Mechanical Properties of Reactive Powder Concrete (RPC) with Various Steel Fiber and Silica Fume Contents

Abstract

An experimental work was carried out to investigate some mechanical propertiesof Reactive Powder Concrete (RPC) which are particularly required as input data forstructural design. These properties include compressive strength, tensile strength(direct, splitting and flexural), flexural toughness, load-deflection capacity and staticmodulus of elasticity. The effects of three variable parameters on these properties werecarefully studied which are, the silica fume content SF (0%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, and30%) as a partial replacement by weight of cement, hooked macro steel fibers volumefraction Vf (0%, 1%, 2% and 3%) and superplasticizertype(Sikament®-163N andPC200).The diameter of the steel fiber is 0.5mm and its length is 30mm with aspectratio 60.The experimental results showed that as the silica fume content (SF) increasesfrom 0% to 30% the compressive strength significantly increases, while the increase intensile strength is relatively lower. The inclusion of steel fibers leads to a considerableincrease intensile strength, while the addition of steel fibers causes a slight increase incompressive strength of RPC as fiber volume fraction increases from 0% to 3%.Theincrease in the steel fibers volume fraction and silica fume content improved the loaddeflectionbehavior and consequently gave higher ductility and fracture toughness ofRPC.