Experimental study on the mechanical properties of polypropylene fiber-steel bar reinforced concrete pipe

The cracking of reinforced concrete pipe during pipe jacking construction seriously affects the project quality and subsequent operation. In view of the role of polypropylene fiber in improving the crack resistance and tensile properties of concrete, this paper adopted two types of fine polypropylene fibers and one type of crude polypropylene fiber, designing 3 groups of reinforced concrete pipe specimens, which were reinforced with plain concrete, single-scale crude fiber and hybrid three-scale fibers. The three-edge-bearing test was carried out. The cracking failure patterns, load-deflection responses and ductility indexes after cracking of these pipes were comparatively analyzed. A finite element numerical model was developed for reproducing the three-edge-bearing test to investigate the influence law of polypropylene fiber content on the mechanical properties of reinforced concrete pipe. The results show that the crack resistance and load-bearing capacities of concrete pipe are improved by adding crude polypropylene fiber, and the higher service and ultimate strength of pipe are achieved under the synergistic action of fine and crude polypropylene fibers. Compared with the pipe without fiber, the hybrid multi-scale fibers increase the service and ultimate strength by 28.7% and 36.4%. In addition, using this numerical simulation method, the load-deflection responses of fiber reinforced concrete pipe can be reasonably predicted, and the optimum contents of crude fiber when incorporating single-scale and three-scale fibers are obtained, aiming to the higher ultimate strength of concrete pipe.