Contribution of steel fiber as reinforcement to the properties of cement-based concrete: A review

During the past decades, development of reinforcing materials caused a revolution in the structure of high strength and high performance cement-based concrete. Among the most important and exciting reinforcing materials, Steel Fiber (SF) becomes a widely used in the recent years. The main reason for addition of SF is to enhance the toughness and tensile strength and limit development and propagation of cracks and deformation characteristics of the SF blended concrete. Basically this technique of strengthening the concrete structures considerably modifies the physical and mechanical properties of plain cement-based concrete which is brittle in nature with low flexural and tensile strength compared to its intrinsic compressive strength. This paper presents an overview of the work carried out on the use of SF as reinforcement in cement-based concrete matrix. Reported properties in this study are fresh properties, mechanical and durability of the blended concretes.