Impact resistance of steel fiber reinforced concrete

Concrete in many civil engineering structures must have adequate resistance to impact and impulsively applied loads. Unfortunately, our understanding of the behavior of concrete to impact loads is far from adequate and there is significant variability in the published literature. The primary reason for this is the lack of a standardized technique of testing concrete under impact. This paper describes the construction of a simple impact machine capable of conducting impact tests on concrete in uniaxial tension. Impact data for normal-strength, medium-strength, high-strength, and fiber reinforced concrete is presented. It is demonstrated that the machine is capable of generating rational impact data for various concretes tested and this data can be useful in design.