An Experimental and Numerical Investigation on the Bending Behavior of Fiber Reinforced Concrete Beams

The effects of hooked end steel and polypropylene (PP) fibers on the behavior of large-scale doubly reinforced concrete beams under flexure were investigated using experimental and numeric methods. For this purpose, a total of eight beam specimens consisting in two groups were produced in the laboratory and three-point bending tests were conducted under monotonically increasing load. The beams in the groups were designed to have 0.86 and 1.30% tensile reinforcement ratios leading to either flexural or shear critical sections. Three out of eight were produced to be control samples and did not have any fiber additive while remaining five had 0, 0.5 and 1.0% steel or PP fibers by volume. Experimental results showed that the existence of 0.5% either type of fiber in densely reinforced specimens contributed to shear strength and allowed flexural capacities to be fully used instead of an improvement in the capacity. However, when the steel fiber ratio increased to 1.0% flexural capacity was enhanced by 10% for both type of beams. After the experimental study, the beams numerically modeled using nonlinear finite element method and flexural stiffness before yielding as well as yield strength with load carrying capacities were found to be consistent with that of experiments specifically for the beams having stirrup and steel fibers.