The Mechanical Properties and Damage Evolution of UHPC Reinforced with Glass Fibers and High-Performance Polypropylene Fibers

Due to the sharp and corrosion-prone features of steel fibers, there is a demand for ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC) reinforced with nonmetallic fibers. In this paper, glass fiber (GF) and the high-performance polypropylene (HPP) fiber were selected to prepare UHPC, and the effects of different fibers on the compressive, tensile and bending properties of UHPC were investigated, experimentally and numerically. Then, the damage evolution of UHPC was further studied numerically, adopting the concrete damaged plasticity (CDP) model. The difference between the simulation values and experimental values was within 5.0%, verifying the reliability of the numerical model. The results indicate that 2.0% fiber content in UHPC provides better mechanical properties. In addition, the glass fiber was more significant in strengthening the effect. Compared with HPP-UHPC, the compressive, tensile and flexural strength of GF-UHPC increased by about 20%, 30% and 40%, respectively. However, the flexural toughness indexes I₅, I₁₀ and I₂₀ of HPP-UHPC were about 1.2, 2.0 and 3.8 times those of GF-UHPC, respectively, showing that the toughening effect of the HPP fiber is better.