Stress–strain relationship of ductile materials and flexural behavior of ductile over-reinforced concrete beams

Abstract

This paper aimed to investigate the effect of using ductile materials in the compression zone on the flexural performance of over-reinforced concrete beams. In order to avoid brittle compression failure, partial replacement of concrete with ductile materials layer in the compression zone was used. Four over-reinforced concrete beams of size 120 × 180 × 1,300 mm were cast and tested under three-point loading conditions. The steel fibers reinforced concrete (SFRC), slurry infiltrated fiber concrete (SIFCON), and ultra-high performance fiber reinforced concrete (UHPFRC) were used as ductile materials. The flexural capacity of the beams, failure modes, crack patterns, load-deflection relationships, ductility index, and toughness were investigated. The results showed that using ductile materials in the compression zone is an effective technique to increase the ultimate load, ductility, and toughness by up to 52.46, 84.78 and 279.93%, respectively, compared to the reference beam. In addition, the failure mode changed from brittle to ductile failure. Noting that the use of SFRC layer enhanced the ductility of over-reinforced concrete beams more than using UHPFRC and SIFCON layers. Also, one of the main advantages of this technique is led to increase the tensile reinforcement ratio up to 8.548% without needing the compressive reinforcement. Thus, ductile composite beams with a high flexural capacity were generated using an economical amount of ductile materials.