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Analysis of short fibres orientation in steel fibre-reinforced concrete (SFRC) by X-ray tomography

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Abstract

The mechanical properties of fibre composite materials are largely determined by the orientation of fibres within the matrix. Which orientation distribution short fibres follow in different parts of a structural element is still a subject for research and discussions in the scientific community. In this article, we present a modern and advanced method for measuring the orientation of short fibres in steel fibre-reinforced concrete (SFRC) by X-ray microtomography. With this method, a voxel image of the fibres is obtained directly in 3D, and the orientation of each individual fibre is calculated based on a skeletonized representation of this image. Scans of 12 SFRC samples, taken from the central height region of real-size floor slabs, reveal the fibres to be mostly horizontally oriented near the centre of a floor slab and more vertically oriented near the edge; here the alignment with the formwork dominates. The fibre orientation distributions are characterized by several orientation parameters as quantitative measures for the alignment. On the practical side, this method has the potential to be incorporated into the development and production process of SFRC structures to verify how the fibres contribute to capacity.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the developers of open source software, particularly the developers of the R packages and ImageJ, that have been used in this research. Furthermore, the authors thank Rudus OY for providing the floor slabs and support. We thank the reviewers for their helpful comments and for pointing to [14, 21–23, 36, 42]. Supported by ‘The Doctoral Programme of the Built Environment’ (RYM-TO) funded through the Academy of Finland and the Ministry of Education, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in form of a Feodor-Lynen-Fellowship for H.H. and the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research is gratefully acknowledged. J.-P. S. would like to thank the National Doctoral Programme in Materials Physics for financial support. A.K. would like to thank the Väisälä Foundation and the Academy of Finland for financial support. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under Grant Agreement No. PERG04-GA-2008-238191 (project ESTwave). Compiled with the assistance of the Tiger University Program of the Estonian Information Technology Foundation (VisPar system, EITSA Grant 10-03-00-24). This research was supported by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund, in particular through funding for the ‘Centre for Nonlinear Studies’ as an Estonian National Centre of Excellence.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of Helsinki, PO Box 64, 00014, Helsinki, Finland

    Jussi-Petteri Suuronen, Aki Kallonen & Ritva Serimaa

  2. Department of Civil and Structural Engineering, Aalto University School of Engineering, Rakentajanaukio 4 A, Otaniemi, Espoo, Finland

    Marika Eik & Jari Puttonen

  3. Centre for Nonlinear Studies, Institute of Cybernetics at Tallinn University of Technology, Akadeemia Tee 21, 12618, Tallinn, Estonia

    Marika Eik & Heiko Herrmann

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  1. Jussi-Petteri Suuronen
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Correspondence to Heiko Herrmann.

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Suuronen, JP., Kallonen, A., Eik, M. et al. Analysis of short fibres orientation in steel fibre-reinforced concrete (SFRC) by X-ray tomography. J Mater Sci 48, 1358–1367 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-012-6882-4

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