Steel Fiber-Reinforced Concrete Beams-Part I: Materia Characterization and In-Service Behavior

A major revision to the Australian Standard for the design of reinforced concrete bridges was released in early 2017. This is one of the first standards in the world to include robust and rational design procedures for the design of steel fiber-reinforced concrete (SFRC) one-way members. This and the accompanying paper that Allows are aimed toward practicing structural engineers to provide a detailed understanding of the different parameters to be calculated in the standard and describe why they are important. A fundamental understanding of the behavior of SFRC at the material level is required before it can be routinely used in structures. Only when the material constitutive relationship for SFRC is determined with confidence can the material be reliably incorporated into structural elements. In this paper; the constitutive relationship for SFRC in tension is quantified and procedures for determining the instantaneous deflections and crack widths of SFRC beams are developed.