Influence of Fibrous Layers on the Behavior of Self-Compacting Lightweight Reinforced Concrete Slabs under Area Load

Abstract

Abstract The current research studies the effectiveness of steel fibrous layers on the performance of self-compacting lightweight reinforced concrete two-way slabs with (length/width) ratio ≈ 1.618 (golden ratio). In this work, steel fibers (SFs) have been added to four slab specimens with volume fractions of 0.4 % and 0.8 %, in one bottom layer and two top and bottom layers, in addition to a reference slab without SFs, the four slabs were tested under uniform load. The results revealed that when using single or dual fibrous layers, the flexural strength of slabs was considerably enlarged (numerically 41.3 % for single bottom layer and 72.4 % for both top and bottom layers when using 0.4 % SF, and 113.7 % for a single bottom layer and 193 % for both top and bottom layers when using 0.8 % SF) as compared with nonfibrous slabs, and the failure mode had altered from flexure mode to shear one as compared with nonfibrous slabs. The effect of these fibrous layers was enlarged with increasing the content of SF. And for the same amount of SF, the influence of SF is greater when it is distributed in one bottom layer (numerically 113.7 %) than when distributed in two layers (numerically 41.3 %).