Flexural performance of ring-type steel fiber-reinforced concrete

Steel fiber-reinforced concrete (SFRC) with randomly dispersed, short straight steel fibers hardly fails by fiber yielding, and the postpeak behavior is governed by mechanisms related to fiber pullout. It would be more desirable if more fracture energy could be consumed by fiber yielding at failure. It has been experimentally demonstrated in this research that SFRC with the ring-type steel fibers failed by more energy consuming mechanisms other than fiber pullout. Consequently, significant improvements in flexural toughness were obtained as compared to that of SFRC with conventional straight steel fibers.