Over the last few decades, the astonishing developments of super plasticizers technology allowedgreat achievements on the conception of concrete mixes exhibiting self-compacting ability. Since the eighties,some methodologies have been proposed to achieve self-compacting requirements in fresh concrete mixes, basedon the evaluation of the flowing properties of these mixes. There still persist, however, some doubts about themost appropriate strategy to define the optimum composition of a self-compacting concrete (SCC) mix, based ona required performance. The behavior of SCC as a structural material can be improved if adequate steel fiberreinforcement is added to SCC mix composition. In fact, the fiber reinforcement mechanisms can convert thebrittle behavior of this cement based material into a pseudo-ductile behavior up to a crack width that isacceptable under the structural design point-of-view. Fiber addition, however, increases the complexity of themix design process, due to the strong perturbation effect that steel fibers cause on fresh concrete flow. In thepresent work, a mix design method is proposed to develop cost effective and high performance Steel FiberReinforced Self-Compacting Concrete (SFRSCC). The material properties of the developed SFRSCC areassessed as well as its potentiality as a structural material, carrying out punching and flexural tests on panelprototypes. A material nonlinear analysis is carried out, aiming to address the possibility of calibrating theconstitutive model parameters by obtaining, with an inverse analysis, the fracture parameters using forcedeflectionrelationships recorded in simpler laboratory tests, like the three point notched beam bending test. Thecontribution of steel fibers for punching resistance is also, by this means, discussed.
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