Shear performance assessment of steel fiber reinforced-prestressed concrete members

In this study, shear tests on steel fiber reinforced-prestressed concrete (SFR-PSC) members were conducted with test parameters of the concrete compressive strength, the volume fraction of steel fibers, and the level of effective prestress. The SFR-PSC members showed higher shear strengths and stiffness after diagonal cracking compared to the conventional prestressed concrete (PSC) members without steel fibers. In addition, their shear deformational behavior was measured using the image-based non-contact displacement measurement system, which was then compared to the results of nonlinear finite element analyses (NLFEA). In the NLFEA proposed in this study, a bi-axial tensile behavior model, which can reflect the tensile behavior of the steel fiber-reinforced concrete (SFRC) in a simple manner, was introduced into the smeared crack truss model. The NLFEA model proposed in this study provided a good estimation of shear behavior of the SFRPSC members, such as the stiffness, strengths, and failure modes, reflecting the effect of the key influential factors.