The Strength and Behavior of Steel Fiber-Reinforced Concrete under Combined Tension-Compression Loading.

The addition of steel fibers to concrete-type materials has been shown to improve many of the engineering properties of those materials. Notable among them is an enhancement in the tensile strength of an otherwise weak and brittle material. Although much is known about the tensile strength of steel-fiber reinforced concrete SFRC under one-dimensional state of stress, little is known with regard to the strength behavior under multi-dimensional tension-compression loading. This is attributed to a lack of suitable equipment for simultaneously applying tensile and compressive stresses. The research program described herein is focused on developing such equipment to study the behavior of SFRC under combined loadings. A review of the state-of-the-art research on the tensile strength of SFRC is given and a review of various methods of applying tensile stresses to concrete specimens is presented. The problem is to be overcome in applying a pure principal tensile stress are discussed.