Dynamic properties of polypropylene fiber-reinforced concrete slabs

A series of experiments were performed on both simply supported and on-grade circular slab specimens, reinforced with different volumes of fibrillated polypropylene fibers, to gauge the fibers' influence on the slab's impact resistance and natural frequency. Numerical simulations were then used to reproduce the natural frequencies. In conjunction with these experiments, standard compression and flexural tests were run to determine the material strength of the concrete. It was found that the inclusion of fibers produced an improvement in impact resistance proportional to the fiber volume contained in the concrete and had no affect on the natural frequency. An inverse relationship between fiber volume and material strength was also found for both compression and flexure. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.