Investigation of flexural strength of ultra-high performance concrete reinforced with steel fibers using multiscale finite element model

The main purpose of this study is to develop a finite element model to study the effect of steel-shaped fibers on the flexural strength of ultra-high performance fiber concrete. For this purpose, in order to numerically simulate, a multi-scale finite element model was developed in which concrete was modeled as a homogeneous and uniform material and steel fibers were randomly distributed inside it. In order to make more realistic assumptions, the area of ​​adhesion between the fibers and the concrete is also considered. After validating the results of finite element model with the results of experimental tests, the effect of parameters such as volume fraction and adhesion of steel fibers on the strength characteristics of flexural strength of ultra-high performance concrete reinforced with fibers has been studied numerically. The results indicate that the effect of using fibers on the amount of energy absorption by fiber reinforced concrete is much greater than its effect on other characteristics of this type of concrete and especially the use of fibers in low fiber volumes has a very significant effect on energy absorption so that for 0.5% of the volume fraction of steel fibers, an increase of about 17 times compared to the sample of super-reinforced concrete without fibers can be resulted