Toughness indices of steel fiber reinforced concrete under mode II loading

The toughness indices of fiber reinforced concrete under Mode II loading effects are rarely reported due to lack of information on standard testing procedures. However, the direct shear test with improvement over JSCE-SF6 method is generally accepted to study Mode II fracture parameters. In this paper, experimental investigations to determine the fracture properties and toughness indices of steel fiber reinforced concrete (FRC) under Mode II loading are reported. Straight steel fibers of length 25 mm with an aspect ratio of 44.6 were randomly distributed in concrete with varying fiber volume fractions of 0, 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5%. A symmetrical Mode II loading set up was designed to achieve an ideal shear failure. It has been observed that the failure was due essentially to shear (Mode II) fracture without secondary flexural cracking. Plain concrete failed at a low equivalent shear strain of 0.5%, while the addition of steel fibers improved the shear strains up to as much as 8.0%. The shear strength and the shear toughness of concrete with the addition of steel fibers have been improved very significantly. As the volume fraction of fibers increases, the shear strength increases up to an optimum volume fraction, beyond which there has been no improvement on the shear strength. However, the toughness indices determined in Mode II loading (shear) have been observed to be about 15 times as high as that under Mode I loading (flexure).