Flexural Fatigue Behavior of a Self-Compacting Ultrahigh Performance Fiber-Reinforced Concrete

Abstract

The flexural fatigue behavior of an ultrahigh performance fiber-reinforced concrete (UHPFRC) is investigated. This UHPFRC is a self-compacting and industrially competitive version of an earlier material developed by the second author that is expensive because of the high cost of brass-coated steel fibers used in it. It is found that the distribution of fibers plays a crucial role in the fatigue resistance of this UHPFRC. Uniform distribution of fibers ensures that the material has a very high fatigue endurance limit (19 MPa)—more than 80% of its static flexural strength (24.36 MPa) at a mean stress of 44.5% (10.85 MPa)—but this decreases to approximately 64% (14 MPa) of the static strength (22.02 MPa) at a mean stress of 37% if the distribution is nonuniform with regions of few or no fibers.