Proposed model for uniaxial compression behavior of reactive powder concrete

Abstract EN

This paper investigates experimentally the complete compressive stress-strain relationships of Reactive Powder Concrete (RPC) and general equation for expressing such relationships is obtained.

The effects of three variable parameters on the compression behavior were carefully studied which are, the silica fume content SF (0 %, 10 %, 15 %, 20 %, 25 %, and 30 %) as a partial replacement by weight of cement, steel fibers volume fraction Vf (0 %, 1 %, 2 % and 3 %) and superplasticizer type (Sikament ®-163N, PC200).

The experimental results of the compressive stress-strain relationship obtained for different RPC mixes, showed that increasing the silica fume content caused the ascending part of the compressive stressstrain curve to become steeper giving higher modulus of elasticity as well as an apparent increase in compressive strength, but there was no clear effect on the value of its corresponding strain.

It was also found that the addition of steel fibers slightly increased the slope of the ascending portion of the stressstrain curve, but there was a clear increase in strain at peak stress and an increase in ductility.

The suggested nonlinear equation for modeling the complete compressive stress-strain relationship of RPC showed a very close agreement with the experimental results and therefore this proposed equation can be used safely in design and analysis.