192

Comparative study of design of fiber

concrete slab on ground using toughness
method and residual stress method

Edmilson Corrêa Pinto Junior Paulo Roberto Lopes Lima

UEFS UEFS

Murilo Matos Conceição Geraldo José Belmonte dos Santos

UEFS UEFS

10.37885/211206975
 ABSTRACT

The use of fibers as concrete reinforcement, replacing steel bars and meshes, is a practice
increasingly used in the production of industrial floors, due to the economy and speed of
the construction process. However, the design method needs to be adequate to avoid
the appearance of undesirable cracks that could cause the interruption of the industrial
operation. Recently, the design method of fiber concrete floors based on the residual
stresses of the concrete, obtained after the cracking of the matrix, has been adopted by
some design standards to replace the traditional method based on toughness. To compare
the efficiency of the two methods, this study uses experimental results obtained in the
literature and calculates the necessary thickness for an industrial floor with usual loading.
The structural design indicates that the floor thickness is inversely proportional to the fiber
content in the concrete, with the use of steel fiber reinforced concrete resulting in floors
that are thinner than polymeric fiber reinforced concrete. The method based on residual
stresses is more sensitive to variation in fiber content than the toughness method but
resulted in higher values of floors thickness.

K e y w o r d s: F i b e r R e i n f o r c e d C o n c r e t e , S l a b - o n - G r o u n d , R e s i d u a l F l e x u r a l
Strength, Toughness.

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 INTRODUCTION

Concrete floors are important structural elements of industrial buildings, since, unlike
other construction elements, the repair and recovery operations of floors usually cannot be
carried out without directly affecting production. Because of this, the dimensioning of the floors
needs to be precise. In addition to the concern with the users’ safety, it has an economic
impact associated with the industry’s productivity.
The most common industrial floors are made of reinforced concrete with bars or steel
meshes to absorb the bending and traction efforts produced by operations, which include
moving people and forklifts, distributed load, storage of materials or racking. The use of
fibers in concrete floors is an old practice used with the aim of improving the properties of
concrete in the early ages. However, in recent years, the use of fibers as the main reinfor-
cement instead of steel bars reinforcement has become increasingly common (Alani et al,
2012). Fiber-reinforced concrete (FRC) is easy to produce, as it dispenses with the steps of
preparation and placement of reinforcement bars and may have a lower cost in non-steel
producing countries, as the fibers can be made from glass (LÖBER; HOLSCHEMACHER,
2014) or polymer (DEZFOULI; ORAK, 2019).
According Figueiredo (2017), although the characteristics of FRC are different from
conventional reinforced concrete, the principle of both is the same, which is to allow the
composite material to be tensioned with some security for the user, but the calculation con-
ceptions and the technology involved to produce them are distinct. The fiber works best in
structures where the main tensile stresses are not well localized and fixed, as in a concrete
floor, where moments can be positive or negative during its use, depending on the loading
position. For this application, a diffuse reinforcement of the floor is interesting, so the use of
fibers may be appropriate.
While the design of steel-reinforced floors follows the procedures used for conventional
structures, fiber-reinforced concrete provides increased residual post-cracking strength to
concrete slabs-on-ground and increased deformations. Because of this, there are differences
between the design methods that need to be considered. According Malmberg (2001) special
care must be taken when sizing industrial concrete floors with fibers to avoid not desired
joints, cracking and unacceptable surface properties.
In the slabs-on-ground design, the thickness of floor and the fiber content necessary
to avoid cracks are defined by two model: i) an older model based on the toughness of con-
crete after the appearance of the first crack, called the Toughness Method, and used by the
ACI 360R-06 (2006), TR34 (CONCRETE SOCIETY, 2003) and by Swiss recommendations
(SILFWERBRAND, 2008) and, ii) the Residual Stress Method, based on the determination
of post-cracking stresses in notched beam testing, which has been presented in the 4th
edition of TR 34 (CONCRETE SOCIETY, 2018) and in the Btazilian Standard ABNT NBR
16935 (ABNT, 2021). As they are based on different theories, the methods are expected to 2488
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result in different values of floor thickness, but this hypothesis has still not been verified in
works on the subject.
The objective of this work is to evaluate the design of fibers-reinforced condrete e floors
carried out with the Residual Stress Method by comparing it with the design using the tradi-
tional method based on toughness. For this, a bibliographic survey of experimental studies
was carried out, with various types of fiber reinforced concrete, to identify the influence of
fiber type and content on the toughness of concrete. Later, one of the works was chosen and
used as a reference for the design of an industrial floor with both methods.

DESIGN EQUATIONS FOR SLABS-ON-GROUND

The main objective of design of a floor supported by on elastic base is to determine the
optimal thickness and reinforcement ratio so that the concrete slab does not present cracks
under the action of concentrated or distributed loads. Fig. 1 shows the case of a single point
load P applied on a concrete slabs-on-ground. As the load increases, the positive tangential
moment (Mp) increases and the flexural stresses under load will become equal to the flexural
strength of the concrete, leading to radial tension cracks in the bottom of the slab. With an
increase in the load, the moments are redistributed and there is an increase in the negative
circumferential moment (Mn) far from the loaded area. Tensile cracking will occur in the top
of the slab if the maximum negative circumferential moment exceeds the cracking moment
of concrete. When this condition is reached, failure is considered to have occurred as the
design criterion is to avoid surface cracks.

Fig. 1. Development of radial and circumferential cracks in the concrete ground‑supported slab due negative and positive
moment.

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 The fiber-reinforced concrete slab design then comes down to determining the maximum
load that could be applied before the concrete cracks, i.e.:

(1)

where Pu, which is the load that generates a cracking moment in the slab, is a function of the
material properties (concrete and reinforcement), the loading position on the slab (internal,
edge or corner), the characteristics of the supporting soil (modulus of subgrade reaction)
and plate geometry.
Based on the work of Losberg (1961) and Meyerhoh (1962), the following equations
can be used to determine the load Pu on the plate for different loading position:

● For internal charge: (2)

● For edge charge: (3)

● For corner charge: (4)

where Mn is the slab’s negative moment resistance (in kN.m) obtained for plain, unreinforced
concrete, and Mp is the slabs positive moment resistance considering reinforced concrete.
These equations are valid for a relation , where is the equivalent radius of
the contact area of the load and is the radius of relative stiffness, defined from studies by
Westergaard and given by (CONCRETE SOCIETY, 2018):

(5)

where,
Ecm = short-term modulus of elasticity of the concrete (N/mm2)
h = slab thickness (mm)
k = modulus of subgrade reaction (N/mm2/mm, taken as N/mm3)
ν = Poisson’s ratio, taken as 0.2

Moment Capacity of Concrete

The moment strength of the concrete slab on an elastic base is defined by the sum of
the negative moment resistance, Mn with the positive moment strength Mp.
The determination of the negative moment Mn is made based on the theory of elasticity
and considers the contribution of unreinforced concrete:
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 (6)

where is the flexural tensile strength oh concrete for design and is the floor´s thickness.
The positive moment, Mp, on the other hand, is defined by the contribution of the concrete
reinforcement which can be made with steel bars (steel reinforced concrete) or dispersed
fibers (Steel and macro-fiber-reinforced concrete).
The use of randomly dispersed fibers in concrete has the main function of minimizing
the propagation of cracks that arise when the internal stress exceeds the tensile strength.
The presence of fibers crossing the crack then inhibits crack opening through the bridging
effect between the two crack faces and allows the transfer of part of the stresses in the
cracked concrete. Therefore, the structural element under bending presents a post-cracking
ductile behavior, with a gradual reduction in stresses (residual stresses) and an increase in
the energy absorption capacity (toughness).
In the case of fiber-reinforced concrete slab design, two models can be used to consider
the effect of the fiber reinforcement contribution on the slab’s moment of resistance: i) the
model based on toughness and ii) the model based on residual stresses.

Toughness Method

The toughness of fiber concrete is usually determined through a bending test of pris-
matic elements. The Toughness Method uses as reference the standardized test by the
Japanese standard JSCE-SF4 (1984), which uses prisms with dimensions 100x100x350 mm
or 150x150x500 mm subjected to a four-point test. The typical load-displacement curve of
this test is shown in Fig. 2a, from which the flexural toughness Tb corresponding to the area
under the load-displacement curve is determined. The displacement limit value is adopted
by JSCE as L/150, which would correspond to 2 mm or 3 mm, depending on the size of the
specimen used, with L being the distance between the supports.

Fig. 2. Tests to determine the toughness (a) and residual stresses (b) of fiber reinforced concrete.

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 Once the value of Tb is established, the bending toughness factor and the equivalent
bending strength ratio can then be calculated by:

(7)

(8)

where b is the width of the beam and H the height of the beam and is the bending strength
obtained in the test:

(9)

After determining the strength and toughness parameters associated with fiber reinfor-
ced MR concrete, it is then possible to determine the values of Mp and the moment resistance
of the slab under elastic base:

(10)

(11)

According to Concrete Society (2018), the minimum value of is 0.3 so that fiber
reinforced concrete can be used in the production of slabs supported on elastic base. The
negative moment , given by Equation (6), is established based on the hypothesis that the
addition of fibers does not significantly affect the flexural strength of concrete.

Residual Stress Method

As shown in Fig. 2a, the addition of fiber allows that, even after opening a first crack,
the beam continues to maintain a certain level of resistance as the displacement increases,
preventing the sudden rupture. The determination of residual stresses is performed by testing
three points on a notched beam, according to EN14651 (2007), with dimensions 150x150x550
mm. The test result, shown in Fig. 2b, is presented as a curve load versus crack mouth
opening displacement (CMOD), from which it is possible to determine the flexural residual
tensile strength, fR:

(12)

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where FR is applied load at stage R (range 1 to 4); L is the span (500mm); b is the width
(150mm); hsp is depth of the section to the tip of the notch (125mm).
Considering the contribution of fiber-reinforced concrete in the part of the slab under
tensile stresses, it is then possible to determine the moment resistance MR through the con-
ventional method of balancing the cross section, traditionally applied in the design of reinforced
concrete structures. For this, the stress-strain diagrams are established, as shown in Fig. 3,
and the balance of normal forces and bending moment is obtained.
The rupture for the concrete slab supported on an elastic base corresponds to the
crushing of the compressed concrete when the compressive strain reaches 0.35%, thus ne-
glecting the effect of the fiber on the increase in rupture deformations in compression. In that
case, an elastoplastic diagram can be established in compression. In the tensioned part, a
trapezoidal stress-strain diagram is established from the residual stresses of the concrete with
fibers, with stress varying linearly from to , given by (CONCRETE SOCIETY, 2018):

(13)

(14)

where fR1 is the residual flexural strength at CMOD1 = 0.5 mm e fR4 is the residual flexural
strength at CMOD4 = 3.5mm.
From the balance of the cross section shown in Fig. 3 (N = T21 + T22), the resistant
moment is given by:

(15)

where h is the section height and is the partial safety factor for materials.

Fig. 3. Stress block of fibre-reinforced concrete according TR34 (CONCRETE SOCIETY, 2018).

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 METHODOLOGY

The evaluation of the calculation methods was carried out by determining the thickness
of an industrial floor made of concrete with fibers.
For the elastic base of the floor, a subgrade thickness of 10 cm was adopted with a
modulus of subgrade reaction of 0.042 N/mm3. The mobile load was based on a forklift, with
a load/wheel value of single-wheel vehicles of 15 kN, with wheel spacing of 0.89m, and tire
pressure of 1.75MPa. Concentrated loads representing shelves and pallet racks were defi-
ned with dimensions of 1.2 x 1.0 m axis to axis, surface contact area of 160 cm² and load/
foot of 20 KN. For distributed loads, a uniform loading of 40 kN/m² was defined. As a result,
a critical moment of 895.85 kN.cm was obtained at the edges of the plate.
Using the Toughness Method, the effect of the type and dosage of fibers on the thick-
ness of the industrial floor was evaluated. For this, the experimental results obtained by Leite
(2018), Löber and Holschemacher (2014), Malmberg (2001), Rodrigues (2010) and Salvador
(2013) were used. The types of fibers used by the authors are presented in Table 1. The
compressive strength of the concretes was 30, 40 and 50 MPa.
The second study was developed to compare the thickness of concrete floors obtained
with Toughness Method with one obtained according to the Residual Stress Method. For this,
the steel fiber reinforced concrete presented by Guimarães (2015) was used as reference
since that author performed bending tests proposed by JCSE and by EN14651 for concretes
with fiber content ranging from 0.25% to 0.60%, with SF65 and SF80 fibers.

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 Table 1. Technical characteristics of the studied metallic and polymeric fibers.

Designation SF 45/50 SF 65/60 SF 80/60 PF 74/51 PF 106/54

Type Steel fiber Steel fiber Steel fiber Polypropylene Polypropylene
Shape Hooked end Hooked end Hooked end monofilament monofilament
Length (mm) 50 60 60 51 54
Equivalent Diameter (mm) 1.11 0.92 0.75 0.69 0.51
Aspect ratio 45 65 80 74 106
Density (g/cm³) 7.85 7.85 7.85 0.90 0.91
Tensile strength (MPa) 1000.0 1000.0 1100.0 600 - 650 570 - 585

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

Effect of Fiber Type on the Thickness of Floors

The design of fiber concrete industrial floors using the Toughness Method is dependent
on the value of Re,3, which in turn is influenced by the type and content of fibers and by the
mechanical properties of the concrete.
Figs. 4 and 5 present Re,3 values obtained in the literature for different types of concre-
te. For steel fiber reinforced concrete (Fig. 4) contents varies between 0.2% and 0.50% and
there is an approximately linear relationship between the fiber content and Re,3, which ranged
from 25 % to 75%. For higher fiber contents, however, there is no proportional increase in
the value of Re,3, which may be associated with the restriction that higher steel fiber contents
impose on the mixing and casting of concrete (CARNEIRO et al., 2013).
For concrete with polypropylene fiber (Fig. 5), this linear relationship between Vf (fibre
content) and Re,3 is verified up to 1% fiber contents, which is justified by the lower stiffness
of the polymeric fiber, compared to steel fiber, which affects less the rheological properties
of the fresh concrete.

Fig. 4. Influence of steel fiber content on the Re,3.

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 Fig. 5. Influence of the type and content of polymeric fiber on the Re,3 (LEITE, 2018; VIAPOL, 2021).

Comparing concretes reinforced with different types of fiber, it is verified that concrete
with polymeric fiber (PF) can reach the same value of Re,3 as concrete with steel fiber (SF),
but with approximately twice the fiber content. This phenomenon is associated with the greater
modulus of elasticity of the steel fiber and the anchoring effect of the deformed steel fiber,
which makes this fiber reach higher fiber-matrix bond values and greater pullout resistance
(BENTUR; MINDESS, 2001). As a result, concrete floors reinforced with polymeric fibers will
have a greater thickness than floors reinforced with steel fiber, with the same fiber content,
as shown in Fig. 6.
The influence aspect ratio of fiber on structural design is shown in Fig. 6. It is verified
that the aspect ratio of steel fibers which varied from 65 to 85, did not affect the floor design.
For concrete reinforced with 0.78% polymer fibers, on the other hand, it is verified that the
floor thickness reduced from 20cm to 18cm with the change of the form factor from 106 to 74.

Fig. 6. Effect of fiber content and type on floor thickness.

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Effect of Design Method

Using the properties of steel fiber reinforced concretes produced by Guimarães (2015),
it was possible to determine the variation in the thickness of the floor when the fiber content
varies from 0.25% to 0.60%, using the Residual Stress Method (Fig. 7a) and the Toughness
Method (Fig. 7b).
For the Residual Stress Method there are a variation in the thickness of the floor of
22.85% with the increase in fiber content. With the Toughness Method, on the other hand,
the floor thickness varied by 11%, showing a lower sensitivity with the change in the fiber
content. This can be explained by the reduced influence of the type of fiber on the value of
Re,3, as presented above.
Toughness Method. The difference between the values for the thickness of the floors
varies from 11% to 28%, depending on the type and content of fiber used.

Fig. 7. Determination of thickness slab according to a) Residual Stress Method and b) Toughness Method.

Fig. 8 shows the comparison between the two methods. The Residual Stress Method is
more conservative, and the floor design results in higher thickness values, when compared
with the Toughness Method.

Fig. 8. Relative variation in floor thickness.

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 CONCLUSION

In this study, two fiber reinforced concrete floor design ao invs de sizing methods were
presented and compared. From the results obtained it is concluded that:
Fiber content and fiber type (steel or polymer) affect the equivalent bending strength
ratio Re,3 of fiber reinforced concrete.
The thickness of the concrete floor is inversely proportional to the fiber dosage content,
and the use of steel fibers allows a reduction in the floor thickness when compared to poly-
meric fibers in concrete with the same fiber content. The floor thickness, on the other hand,
is not affected by the aspect ratio of the steel fiber.
The comparison between the design methods indicated that the Residual Stresses
Method is more conservative and its use results in fiber concrete floors with a thickness
greater than those designed with the Toughness Method. This difference in thickness ranged
from 11 to 28%, depending on the type and fiber content used.

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