Effect of steel fiber type and content on the dynamic tensile properties of ultra-high performance cementitious composites (UHPCC)

•An eco-friendly ultra-high performance cementitious composite (UHPCC) is developed.•Waved steel fibers and straight fibers are used in the UHPCC matrix.•SHPB splitting test is conducted to test the material property for a wide strain rate range.•Increasing fiber content increases the crack control and energy absorption abilities.•DIF for dynamic tensile strength is compared and a prediction model is proposed. As one of the most promising construction and building materials in the past 30 years, ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) has attracted a great deal of attention and the studies on its improvement and dynamic tensile behaviors become more important for its wider use in the related fields. In this contribution, a novel ultra-high performance cementitious composites (UHPCC) was developed with lower cement content, 20% of cement is replaced with fly ash and blast furnace slag, to reduce the raw material cost and carbon emission in production. Uniaxial compression, quasi-static and dynamic splitting tests were carried out to investigate the influences of steel fiber type (straight fiber and waved fiber) and content (volume fraction (0%, 1%, 2%)) on the uniaxial compressive strength, static tensile strength and dynamic tensile behaviors for current UHPCC material. The dynamic splitting tests were conducted on 100 disc specimens (75 mm in diameter and 37.5 mm in thickness) under five different impact pressure at a strain-rate range of 20–110 s−1 to study the strain rate effect by using a Split Hopkinson pressure bar (SHPB) system and the samples’ failure processes were captured by a high-speed camera. Based on the test results, the variations of energy absorption with the fiber type and content under static and dynamic tensile conditions are also analyzed, and combined with the experimental data from previous studies, an improved empirical tensile strength rate sensitivity (DIFft) model is proposed, which agrees well with the experiment results and can be used in the numerical simulation. At last, the failure process and pattern of different types of UHPCCs in the dynamic splitting test are also studied.