Concrete is a brittle material and if uncracked any reinforcing placed with in the concrete matrix is redundant but 90% of the time concrete will fatigue and show signs of cracking but to where is hard to predict but how much it will crack can be determined and controlled by means of reinforcement. What type of reinforcing and the material properties of the reinforcing play a major role in the redistribution of these stresses and how significant the crack widths will be.

The articles in this section hopefully give the reader a better understanding of the appropriate fibre to be used for a given application. It is also worth noting that Fibre technology is changing all the time and new and innovative products, techniques and methods for placing Fibre Reinforced concrete are always being developed.

Article 1: Keg Impact Damage to Fibre Reinforced Concrete Paving (Derek Sinnott / Roger West)
This paper describes the crack patterns that arise from impact loading on pavements. (read more)

Article 2: Tunnels & Tunnelling International (Charles Allen)
This paper compares the use of both Steel and Synthetic fibres in the tunnelling industry and looks and the plusses and minuses for both types of fibre. (read more)               

Article 3: Steel or Synthetic a comparison (Pierre Rossi)
This paper compares both Steel and Synthetic but looks at the Mechanical Properties, how the different fibres behave in the concrete and the Durability of concrete reinforced with fibres (read more)                   

Article 4: Shear Behaviour of Macro-Synthetic Fiber-Reinforced Concrete Beams without Stirrups (Salah Altoubat / Ardavan Yazdanbakhsh, and Klaus-Alexander Rieder)
This paper out lines test results from twenty-seven large-scale beams were instrumented and tested under monotonic centerpoint loading to determine the effect of a newly developed high-modulus macrosynthetic fiber on the shear strength and failure behavior of longitudinally reinforced concrete (RC) beams without stirrups. (read more)               

Article 5: All fibres are not Equal
This paper describes the differences in quality when deciding on a particular fibre. (read more)

Article 6: Civil Engineers and construction professionals no longer consider fibre resinforced concrete as exotic (read more)

Article 7: Comparison Charts for both Steel Dramix fibres and Synthetic fibres. Fibres must be chosen for their appropriate use, considerations must be given to the structural use of the fibres, their material make up and most importantly serviceability limits. The attached charts clearly show how each type of fibre performs and the explanation outlines how these results are obtained. (charts) (explaination of charts)

Article 8: Fibres for concrete, appear in all colours, shapes, sizes and materials. Specific technical strengths and weaknesses of the different fibres, are often less well known, and lead to confusion. The main purpose of this brochure is to offer you aninsight into the technical performance of the different materials. (read more)