Mechanical behavior of recycled coarse aggregate concrete reinforced with steel fibers under direct shear

Recycled coarse aggregate (RCA) concrete has attracted more and more attention worldwide in recent years due to the exhaustion of natural coarse aggregate and environmental pollution from construction and demolition waste in civil engineering. In this study, experiments were carried out on over 100 specimens to investigate the mechanical properties and failure mode of concrete with different volume content of steel fibers (0%, 0.5%, 1%, 1.5%, and 2%) and different RCA replacement ratio (0%, 30%, 50% and 100%) under direct shear load. The results show that addition of steel fibers can effectively improve the shear strength and shear toughness of RCA concrete. For a given compressive strength, the RCA replacement ratio has negligible impact on shear strength, but shear deformation and toughness increase as RCA replacement ratio reaches above a 'limiting value'. A shear strength formula for steel fiber reinforced RCA concrete (SFRCAC) based on compressive strength and characteristic coefficient of steel fiber has been put forward.