A study of the damage and deformation characteristics of steel fiber reinforced concrete with different steel fiber sizes

Steel fiber reinforced concrete is a composite material composed of steel fibers and common concrete. Based on the statistical damage constitutive equations in 3-dimensional stress state, the distribution parameters and critical damage values are obtained for different mixing amounts or dimensions of steel fibers, and the influences of the mixing amount and dimension of the steel fibers on the damage deformation parameters are qualitatively analyzed. The results indicate that steel fibers reduce the brittleness of concrete, and enhance the macroscopic average intensity. The distribution parameter m can reflect the brittleness of the steel fiber reinforced concrete, and its reciprocal 1/m is an indicator of the ductility of the steel fiber reinforced concrete, i.e., the toughening effect of the steel fibers. The distribution parameter Ε can synthetically reflect the macroscopic average intensity, i.e., the reinforcing effect of the steel fibers. The dimension of the steel fibers, such as the slenderness ratio, has a prominent effect on the reinforcing and toughening effects.