Experimental Investigation of Flexural and Impact Behavior of Flexible FRC Slabs

Concrete is widely used in civil engineering constructions due to its significant and proper characteristics. Though concrete is convenient and inexpensive to be made, its brittle behavior upon tensile loading is one of its adverse properties that lead to the development of fiber reinforced concretes (FRCs) and some types of fibers such as steel, carbon, glass and polymer fibers are added to the concrete mixture to overcome these deficiencies. The brittle behavior of concrete is due to the fast growing of a single crack that leads to the uncontrollable failure of the specimen. High tenacity and modulus of elasticity are the notable characteristics of these fibers which are specifically focused in this research. The results revealed good performance of the specimens reinforced with such fibers. The amount of fibers which are expected to be added mainly depends on the functions of the elements which are going to be casted. Adding less than one percent of the fibers to the concrete mixture is suggested to restrain possible shrinkage therein while structural improvement such as flexural enhancement requires more amounts of fibers.