The effect of steel fibres on the enhancement of flexural and compressive toughness and fracture characteristics of oil palm shell concrete

•Addition of 1.0% steel fibre enhanced the flexural toughness of OPSC by up to 16 times.•Compressive toughness improved by 6 times with 0.75% of steel fibre in SFOPSC.•Fracture toughness and fracture energy increased with the addition of steel fibres.•Direct tensile strength increased up to 41% with the addition of 1.0% steel fibre.

This effect of steel fibre on the toughness characteristics such as flexural toughness, fracture parameters and compressive toughness of steel fibre oil palm shell concrete (SFOPSC) is described in this paper. In the post-peak regions of the bending specimens, the addition of steel fibres significantly increased both the fracture energy and flexural toughness of the SFOPSC up to 16 times. The compressive toughness of SFOPSC specimens with 0.75% steel fibre of about 864 kN mm was 6 times higher than the specimens without fibres. The pre-peak response through the mechanical property tests shows an increase of up to 178%, 88% and 41% for splitting tensile, flexural and direct tensile strengths, respectively.