Tensile strength and fracture toughness of steel fiber reinforced concrete measured from small notched beams

Steel fiber reinforced concrete (SFRC) is a kind of multiphase composite material and its tensile strength (ft) and fracture toughness (KIC) cannot be easily measured using small samples due to its highly heterogeneous microstructure. In this study, a novel evaluation is proposed for calculating ft and KIC of brittle heterogeneous solids. The results obtained by this method have been confirmed by three-point bending (TPB) test results of 75 notched SFRC beams in which the length of the corrugated steel fibers is 36 mm. Considering the heterogeneity and discontinuous fracture failure characteristic of SFRC samples, a virtual crack propagation calculation model is established, and the accurate prediction of ft and KIC can be obtained by incorporating the model into the Hu-Duan boundary effect model (BEM). The reasonable range of tensile strength of SFRC used in this paper is about 3.77–5.66 MPa. Compared with the median value of this range, the calculation error of BEM is only 7.69 %. By discussing the influence of α-ratio (defined as the ratio between the height W and the initial notch depth a0) on the predicted results, a value that is less affected by the front and rear boundary is obtained, and the value range is 0.16–0.24. Meanwhile, the exact ft and KIC can be obtained by using only 1–2 groups of samples with reasonable α-ratio. Based on the failure curve of SFRC established by using ft and KIC, the theoretical minimum size of samples with different α-ratio is determined under the condition of linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM). This method provides a valuable reference for the estimation of concrete mechanical parameters.