Experimental study on physical-mechanical characteristics of steel fiber reinforced concrete with worn rope fibers

Abstract

This study examined the physical-mechanical properties of steel fiber reinforced concrete with different fiber orientations and vibration times. The concrete mixtures contained crushed stone, sand, Portland cement, Rheobuild 181A plasticizer, and 5 cm steel fibers with 2% reinforcement. Using steel fibers from worn ropes from Innotech LLP (Almaty, Kazakhstan) increased the average strength of concrete and improved its ductility, allowing for plastic failure instead of brittle failure. Joint mixing of steel fiber-reinforced concrete with randomly oriented fibers made from used cables increased the mean value of flexural strength. The concrete mixtures with a vibration time of 9 seconds showed the highest flexural strength, which was 2.1 times higher than that of concrete samples without fiber. These findings demonstrate the potential of steel fiber reinforcement to improve the mechanical properties of concrete, especially in applications requiring flexural strength.