Mesomechanism of steel fiber reinforcement and toughening of reactive powder concrete

Reactive powder concrete (RPC) is a novel cement-based composite material with ultra-high strength. Embedding a certain amount of short steel fibers in the matrix can improve the RPC's toughness and overcome the disadvantage of high brittleness. In this paper, a number of direct uniaxial tension tests have been carried out with `8-shape' RPC200 specimens. The bond-slip process, mesoscopic structural variation and mechanical characteristics of a fiber pullout of the matrix have been investigated using the real-time SEM loading system and CCD observation techniques. The influence of the volume of embedded short steel fibers in matrix on the mesoscopic morphology of attachments on the surface of a pulled individual fiber, the initial cracking force, the ultimate pullout force, interfacial bond strength and the pullout rupture energy have been analyzed. A general formulation relating these quantities to the volume of fibers in matrix has been proposed. The components comprising the interfacial bond strength have been outlined. In addition, the contribution that fibers make to enhance and toughen the reactive powder concrete has been discussed. It is shown that there exists an optimal threshold of fiber volume rho(v, opt) = 1.5% at which the bond performance of a fiber pullout of RPC behaves best.