Application of the design code for steel fibre reinforced concrete into finite element software

Steel fibre reinforced concrete (SFRC) is more and more used as construction material. Well-known are applications for industrial floors. Nevertheless, this material is also widely used in structural concrete elements where it is especially effective to cover crack widths in combination with standard conventional reinforcement. Currently there is no general part in Eurocode 2 [1] for buildings regarding steel fibre concrete. There are various standards and recommendations for the calculation of the steel fibre contribution. One of the most applied publications is the German guideline DAfStb [2] which was used as a basis for the numerical analysis outlined in this paper. Thus, company SCIA N.V. together with Bekaert N.V. as producer of DRAMIX^® fibres developed a special tool for designing and checking SFRC structures. This tool was built in into finite element software SCIA Engineer and based on the German guideline. To gain a fundamental understanding of the structural behaviour, we have also developed non-linear FEM models, which contain a built-in module for SFRC structures. Numerical simulation results are compared to experimental performance of SFRC slab on piles of the Nanhui project in Shanghai in terms of ultimate load and crack pattern. (paper)