The effect of steel fibres on the enhancement of flexural and compressive toughness and fracture characteristics of oil palm shell concrete

This effect of steel fibre on the toughness characteristics such as flexural toughness, fracture parameters and compressive toughness of steel fibre oil palm shell concrete (SFOPSC) is described in this paper. In the post-peak regions of the bending specimens, the addition of steel fibres significantly increased both the fracture energy and flexural toughness of the SFOPSC up to 16 times. The compressive toughness of SFOPSC specimens with 0.75% steel fibre of about 864 kN mm was 6 times higher than the specimens without fibres. The pre-peak response through the mechanical property tests shows an increase of up to 178%, 88% and 41% for splitting tensile, flexural and direct tensile strengths, respectively.