Abstract

Today there is an opportunity to reinforce concrete with steel fiber reinforcement. In some cases, completely replace the conventional reinforcement. Replacing conventional mesh reinforcement with steel fiber reinforcement in slabs on ground has shown economic benefits, less crack width and less reinforcement amount.

Today there are no Swedish standard for designing steel fiber reinforced concrete, what is there is different international recommendations.

In this work, design methods for steel fiber concrete are used according to RILEM and Bekaer Swedish AB's software DRAPRO. For other design methods Eurokod 2 is followed.

In this work, the design of slabs on ground that are not exposed by large tension strength been designed. Design of crack-reinforcement and restrictions of crack width have been conducted in three different slabs on ground.

The calculations have been performed using only conventional reinforcement and only steel fiber reinforcement, and the results are then compared.

The results of the theoretical analysis are summarized in tables that compare the amount of reinforcement, crack width and economic cost.

This work showed that the slabs on the ground reinforced with steel fibers provide less crack width with a minor amount of reinforcement. The use of steel fiber concrete was also shown to reduce the reinforcement costs by about 70-75%.

The absence of a Swedish standard may have caused some uncertainty among Swedish structural engineers using steel fiber reinforced concrete and there is a limited understanding of the material advantages. This may be a reason for the use of steel fiber concrete is relatively small in Sweden.

Another reason why the use of steel fiber concrete is not expanding may be that the current mesh is so easy to reinforce with and is therefore used of traditional reasons.

Hopefully, this work will make structural engineers to review the possibility of using steel fiber reinforcement instead of conventional mesh reinforcement in slabs on grade. Partly because of its economic advantage but also its ability to minimize crack width with a reminiscent reinforcement amount, which in turn can be beneficial from an environmental perspective.