Flexural Behavior of Reinforced HPFRCC Beams

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High Performance Fiber Reinforced Cementitious Composite (HPFRCC) materials exhibit strain hardening behavior with multiple cracking under tensile loading. In this paper, experimental and parametric studies are performed to assess the influence of using HPFRCC material instead of normal concrete in reinforced concrete beams. After calibrating the experimental results, the analytical results including ductility and plastic hinge characteristics for simply supported beams with different values of compressive strengths are presented and compared with each other and also with the experimental data, where available. The analytical and experimental results indicate that using HPFRCC material instead of normal concrete in RC beams concluded to an increase in ultimate load, deflection, ductility ratio, plastic hinge length and rotation capacity compared to RC beams. In RH beam, fibers act as extra steel reinforcements and high ductility of this beam is attained by existence of this fibers and bridging mechanism of them which prevent the crushing of compressive HPFRCC material.