Influence of specimen size on the fibre geometry and tensile strength of ultra-high-performance fibre-reinforced concrete

Abstract

The influence of the specimen size of ultra-high-performance fibre-reinforced concrete samples on the spatial distribution and orientation of the steel fibres is investigated. Specimens of varying size are produced by using the same protocol. They are imaged by micro-computed tomography to perform a statistical analysis of the spatial arrangement of the fibres. The tensile strength of the specimens is measured by tensile tests on subspecimens of equal size. The results are correlated to geometric characteristics of the fibre systems determined from the image data. Increasing the specimen size results in a larger variability of the local fibre geometry. This effect was most prominent when increasing the height of the specimens.