The Influence of Steel Fiber on the Mechanical Properties of Concrete: An Experimental and Analytical Study

Abstract

In the present situation, construction industries are in thirst of introducing cost-effective materials to the world in order to increase the strength of concrete structures. Conventional concrete possesses very low tensile strength, limited ductility and little resistance to cracking. These drawbacks can be set right by the inclusion of steel or polymeric fibers. Hence, a study has been made on the mechanical properties such as compressive strength, flexural strength and E for concrete of M40 and M50 grade mixed with various percentages of steel fibers (hooked end and crimped steel fiber) of 0.5% and 1% by volume of concrete. It is observed that for the same volume fraction, concrete reinforced with the hooked end fiber showed improvement in all properties as compared to that of crimped steel fiber. It is observed that compressive strength, flexural strength and elastic modulus are on the higher side for 1% fibers as compared to that produced from 0% and 0.5% fibers. Also, Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model has been developed using the experimental data to predict the properties of various parametric Steel Fiber Reinforced Concrete (SFRC) specimens.

Keywords: Steel fibers, Compressive strength, Flexural strength, Elastic modulus, Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model