DURABILITY DESIGN AND APPLICATION OF STEEL FIBER REINFORCED CONCRETE IN TAIWAN.

This paper presents the way durability has been introduced to steel fiber reinforced concrete in Taiwan. It is generally acknowledged that steel fibers are added to improve the toughness, abrasion resistance, and impact strength of concrete. However, a locally developed mixture design method, the densified mixture design algorithm (DMDA), was applied to solve not only the entanglement or balling problem of steel fibers in concrete or to produce steel fiber reinforced self-consolidating concrete (SFRSCC) with excellent flow-ability, but also to increase the durability by reduction in the cement paste content. By dense packing of the aggregates and with the aid of pozzolanic material and superplasticizer (SP), concrete can flow honey-like with less entanglement of steel fibers. Such SFRSCC has already been successfully applied in several projects, such as construction of a low radiation waste container, bus station pavement, road deck panel, and two art statues. So it is recommended that the SFRSCC can be used for improving the performance of ordinary steel fiber reinforced concrete in many ways and should be considered for increasing the lifecycle of a concrete structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]