07-04-2009, 10:51 PM
Construction material subjected to repetitive or cyclic loading have to be qualified for their fatigue behaviour. Generally their behaviour is considered satisfactory if they withstand two million cycle of repetitive loading without distress or failure at that required mean stress level and range stress.
The recent research in reinforcing Portland cement based material with randomly distributed fibres was spurred by pioneering research or fibre reinforced concrete (FRC) conducted in the United state in the 1960s.The addition of fibre in the concrete matrix improves the monotonic flexural strength, flexural fatigue strength, impact strength, shock resistance, ductility, and flexural toughness in concrete, besides delaying and arresting crack proportion.
Fatigue is often described by a parameter ËœFatigue lifeâ„¢ which essentially represents the number of cycles the material can withstand under a given pattern of repetitive loading, before falling.
This paper presents the details of the experimental investigations carried out at the structural engineering research centre (S E R C) to study the behaviour of reinforced concrete beam cast at different types of steel fibre in the concrete matrix and subjected to Fatigue loading.
