Ductility of fiber-reinforced self-consolidating concrete under multi-axial compression

The results of 12 multi-axial compression tests performed on cylinders made of self-consolidating concrete, plain (SCC) and reinforced with steel fibers (FR-SCC), are presented in this paper. In the experimental campaign, four reference confining pressures (0, 1,3 and 10 MPa) were applied on the lateral surface of the specimens. After the first stage of loading, when a hydraulic stress was applied to the cylinders, and progressively increased up to the value of a pre-established confining pressure, a longitudinal compressive load was used to generate crushing of concrete. During this failure, the post-peak behavior of SCC and FR-SCC can be defined by a non-dimensional function that relates the inelastic displacement and the relative stress during softening. Such a function also reveals the ductility of SCC, which increases with the confinement stress and with the fiber volume fraction. In particular, by adding 0.9% in volume of steel fibers. FR-SCC can show practically the same ductility measured in unreinforced SCC with 1 MPa of confining pressure. Thus, the presence of an adequate amount of fibers in SCC columns is sufficient to create a sort of distributed confinement. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.