Mechanical behavior of steel fiber reinforced recycled aggregate concrete under dynamic triaxial compression

An experimental study of cylindrical steel fiber reinforced recycled aggregate concrete (SFRAC) specimens subjected to hydrostatic pressure and dynamic axial loading in a triaxial cell was performed. A confining stress range of 0–40 MPa and strain rate from 10−5 s−1 to 10−2 s−1 were employed using a servo-hydraulic testing system. In addition, two other control variables – volume fraction of steel fiber and replacement ratio of recycled coarse aggregate were also considered. A series of complete stress-strain curves were obtained, and the results were discussed in the aspects of the failure modes, peak triaxial strength, toughness, octahedral stress and failure criterion. The results indicated that an increase in the confining pressure resulted in a change in the failure modes, a significant increase in the peak strength and ductility. In particular, with an increase in confining pressure, the enhancement of strain rate on the peak strength decreased, indicating that there was a coupling effect between these two. The steel fibers had little influence on the failure modes of SFRAC, but significantly improved its ductility and toughness. The addition of recycled coarse aggregates markedly reduced the peak strength and the reduction reached nearly 20%, which was larger than other reports in uniaxial and true triaxial loading. Finally, a failure criterion for SFRAC specimens subjected to dynamic loading was used for validating the experimental results.