Study on mechanical properties of steel fiber reinforced autoclaved lightweight shell-aggregate concrete

The mechanical properties of autoclaved propylene oxide sludge shell-aggregate (POSS-A) concrete are studied in this paper. Under the condition of a fixed water cement ratio, a series of experiments were carried out to investigate the effect of steel fibers content of autoclaved POSS-A concrete on the mechanical properties. The results are compared with those of sintering concrete and crushed stone concrete. The experimental results indicate that adding steel fiber in autoclaved POSS-A concrete can slightly enhance the cubic compressive strength but remarkably improve flexural strength. Because of special spherical structure and appearance of POSS-A, the reinforced effect of steel fiber on autoclaved POSS-A concrete is superior to those of steel fiber on other two types of concretes. Flexural strength of steel fiber reinforced autoclaved POSS-A concrete improve 108% when volume fraction of steel fiber increase from 0% to 2.0%, which is higher than 92% of sintering aggregate concrete and 78% of common concrete.