Magnetic alignment of steel Fibres in self-compacting concrete

Abstract

The dispersion of short or micro steel fibres in the concrete matrix generally assumes a more random orientation. In this paper, we propose an assessed technique of exploiting the electromagnetic field, supplemented with vibration, to align the steel fibres in self-compacting concrete. The low viscosity of self-compacting concrete stimulates the consideration of this mixture, and thereby, the chance for success is more likely. The alignment approach was applied to nine prisms of a size of 100 × 100 × 500 mm and provided with different percentages of microfibres. The efficiency of alignment was compared with three prisms produced with random fibres. Visual inspection was used to assess the alignment efficiency. The fibre orientation factor for the aligned fibres ranged between 0.80 and 0.95 in comparison to 0.3–0.5 for the randomly dispersed fibres. The flexural failure load for the prisms of aligned steel fibres increased by 40% compared to the prisms of randomly distributed fibres.