Experimental and numerical study of hooked-end steel fiber-reinforced concrete based on the meso- and macro-models

In this study, several three-point-bending (TPB) experiments were conducted to investigate the influence of fiber content on the fracture behavior of hooked-end steel fiber-reinforced concrete (SFRC). Subsequently, a numerical meso-model was proposed based on the application of the cohesive/volumetric finite element method, which allows the pervasive fracture along non-prescribed trajectories to be captured accurately. The bond-slip relation and traction-separation relation of the fiber–concrete interface were both considered. Consequently, the accuracy of the meso-model was validated through the experiments conducted in this study. The influence of the separation angle of the SFRC fracture interface on the bridging effect of the fibers was investigated using the proposed model. Finally, based on the conclusions obtained from the experiments and meso-model, a macro-model of SFRC was proposed to improve the computational efficiency, which was validated considering two different experimental cases.