Suitability of Constitutive Models of the Structural Concrete Codes When Applied to Polyolefin Fibre Reinforced Concrete

The use of fibres as structural reinforcement in concrete is included in standards, providing guidelines to reproduce their behaviour, which have been proven adequate when steel fibres are used. Nevertheless, in recent years new materials, such as polyolefin fibres, have undergone significant development as concrete reinforcement. This work gives insight on how suitable the constitutive models proposed by the Model Code 2010 (MC2010) are in the case of such polymer fibres. A set of numerical models has been carried out to reproduce the material behaviour proposed by the MC2010 and the approach based on the softening function proposed by the authors. The results show remarkable differences between the experimental results and the numerical simulations when the constitutive models described in the MC2010 are employed for different polyolefin fibre reinforced concrete mixes, while the material behaviour can be reproduced with greater accuracy if the softening function proposed by the authors is employed when this type of macro-polymer fibres is used. Moreover, the relatively complex behaviour of polyolefin fibre reinforced concrete may be reproduced by using such constitutive model.