Experimental study on static and dynamic mechanical properties of steel fiber reinforced lightweight aggregate concrete

Since high strength of lightweight aggregate concrete leads to increased brittleness, fiber reinforcement should be considered for improving strength and ductility. Five groups of SFLWC specimens with different steel fiber volumes including 0.0%, 0.5%, 1.0%, 1.5% and 2.0% were tested to investigate the effect of steel fiber content on the static mechanical properties and the impact resistance of lightweight aggregate concrete. The static mechanical properties include the prismatic compressive strength, splitting tensile strength, first-crack flexural strength, flexural strength, and flexural toughness, etc. The impact resistance of SFLWC was obtained by a series of drop-weight tests, recommended by the ACI committee 544. The experimental results indicated that addition of steel fiber can greatly improve such mechanical properties as the splitting tensile strength, flexural strength, flexural toughness and impact resistance, but leads to a little effect on compressive strength. The test results also showed that a logarithmic relation exists between flexural toughness energy by means of the generated load–deflection curves from the flexural tests and the impact energy by means of drop-weight tests. Further more, the author suggests the feasible volume ratio of this kind of steel fiber is 1–1.5%.