Impact resistance of porosity-free fiber-reinforced concrete (PFFRC) beams under low-velocity impact loading

Ultrahigh-performance fiber-reinforced concrete (UHPFRC) is an advanced cement-based composite material. Its ultrahigh compressive strength and high ductility can enable the downsizing of structural members, with special application to high-rise buildings. These excellent mechanical properties also allow its application in protective structures to resist high-speed penetration, low-velocity impact, and blast loading. UHPFRC with a compressive strength of approximately 150–200 MPa has traditionally been used to investigate the impact resistance of structural members under low-velocity impact loading. Recently, however, porosity-free concrete of the 400 MPa class of compressive strength has been developed. In this paper, to investigate the effects of the concrete strength and the steel fiber volume fraction on the impact resistance of porosity-free fiber-reinforced concrete (PFFRC) members, static and drop-weight impact loading tests were conducted on PFFRC beams by varying the volume fraction of steel fiber from 1 to 3.5%. As reference beams, 90 MPa high-strength fiber-reinforced concrete (HSFRC) beams with a 2% fiber volume fraction and normal-strength concrete (NSC) beams without stirrups and steel fibers were also tested. The results obtained from this study were as follows: (1) the static load-carrying capacity of a PFFRC beam can be enhanced by more than two and three times that of an NSC beam by adding 1 and 3.5% volume fractions of steel fiber, respectively; (2) a PFFRC beam with 3.5% fiber had the greatest impact resistance of all the beams considered in this study, and the beam with 2% fiber volume had the second-greatest performance, but the difference was small; (3) even though an HSFRC beam with 2% fiber had a smaller static load-carrying capacity than a PFFRC beam with 1% fiber, the former exhibited a slightly greater impact resistance than the latter because the bridging effect of the steel fibers has a greater influence under impact loading than under static loading.