Shear strength of 160 MPa steel fibre reinforced reactive powder concrete bridge girders without stirrups

Abstract

The development of ultra-high-strength-high-performance concrete known as the reactive powder concrete (RPC) was originated in the mid 1990’s by the French and now commercialised under the trade name of DUCTAL by Lafarge-Bouygues-Rhodia, CERACEM by Eiffage and CEMTEC by LCPC. Although RPC has a decade of history with many proven projects and astonishing landmarks have been mounted at various parts of the world, the demand of RPC has yet to be established in this country. This paper shows some of the significant potential advantages of using fibre reinforced RPC in bridge engineering. Experimental results on testing of seven prototype 650 mm deep large-scale I-section girders failing in shear were reported herein. The girders were casted using 150-170 MPa steel fibre reinforced reactive powder concrete and were designed to assess the ability of steel fibre reinforced reactive powder concrete (SFR-RPC) to carry shear stresses in thin webbed prestressed beams without shear reinforcement. Experimental results showed that the quantities and types of fibres in the concrete mix do not significantly affect the initial shear cracking load but increasing the volume of fibers increased the failure load.