Analysis of fatigue life of hybrid fibre reinforced self-compacting concrete

Abstract

This paper presents the results of an investigation conducted to analyse the flexural fatigue life of self-compacting concrete with different proportions of steel fibre (SF) and polypropylene fibre (PPF) reinforcement. An experimental programme was planned to obtain the fatigue lives of approximately 250 beam specimens under four-point flexural loading. Approximately 90 static flexural strength tests were also conducted to facilitate fatigue testing. The proportions of SF and PPF varied in volume but the total volume was kept at 1%. The two-parameter Weibull distribution was used to describe the probability distributions of fatigue life data at different stress levels. The gradual replacement of SF with PPF in the mixes was found to reduce the variability in the distribution of fatigue life significantly. The maximum increase of 62% in the shape parameter for the fatigue life of a mix with 100% PPF as with a mix containing 100% SF was observed at a stress level of 0·85.