Reactive Powder Concrete Mix Ratio and Steel Fiber Content Optimization under Different Curing Conditions

In this paper, a practical reactive powder concrete mixture ratio is created on the basis of an orthogonal experiment. Previous studies have combined the compressive and splitting tensile strengths of four categories of reactive powder concrete (RPC) for major materials. These categories include water/binder ratio, silica fume volume content, sand/binder ratio, and dosage of fly ash volume. The optimal mixing proportion of each factor was determined by analyzing the compressive strength of the RPC matrix. For this purpose, steel fiber was used as a reinforcing agent. The compressive and splitting tensile strength test results of steel fiber RPC were analyzed by comparing compound, standard, and natural curing. This was conducted to explore the improvement effect of different steel fiber contents on compressive performance, especially tensile strength of the RPC matrix. According to the results, the optimal steel fiber content was found to be 4% under the three curing conditions. The effect of compound curing on early strength was found to be greater in RPC than by natural or standard curing. However, the effect of late improvement is not obvious. Although standard curing is slightly stronger than natural curing, the performance under the latter can still meet engineering requirements.