Browsing by Author "Aguirre, Miquel"
Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Effects of fiber material in concrete manufactured with electric arc furnace slag: Experimental and numerical study(2022-01-17) Garcia-Llona, Aratz; Ortega-Lopez, Vanesa; Piñero, Ignacio; Santamaría, Amaia; Aguirre, Miquel; E&I SEGURAS Y RESILIENTESOver recent years, Electric Arc Furnace Slag (EAFS), a by-product of the steel-making industry, has been used as a replacement of natural aggregates to produce high-performance concrete. In EAFS concrete, fibers are normally added to improve post-cracking behavior, thereby prolonging the durability and range of applications of the composite. Despite the rise in its production, the mechanical performance of fiber-reinforced EAFS concrete is still poorly understood, posing important barriers to its daily use. This paper aims to study the effect of fiber materials (steel and synthetic) on EAFS concrete performance. To do so, the paper proposes, firstly, an experimental campaign and, secondly, a numerical simulation to model the effect of fibers both in the pre-cracking and post-cracking stages. Importantly, for the numerical study, an in-house Finite Element (FE) code is developed using interface elements to capture crack propagation. The FE code uses, as input, data obtained in the experimental campaign and is validated against previously unseen experimental results. The overall framework gives important insights on how fibers improve the post-cracking behavior of EAFS concrete and the relevance of fiber material in the overall performance. The validated numerical tool can be used in the future to design EAFS fiber-reinforced concrete structures and therefore increase the applicability of such composite material.Item Finite element method for sustainable and resilient structures made with bar and fiber -reinforced EAFS concrete(2024-07) Garcia-Llona, Aratz; Piñero, Ignacio; Ortega-López, Vanesa; Santamaría, Amaia; Aguirre, Miquel; E&I SEGURAS Y RESILIENTESStructural engineers have to address the climate change challenge by designing sustainable and resilient structures. At this juncture, Electric Arc Furnace Slags (EAFS), a steel-industry waste, are used in replacement of natural aggregates to enhance concrete properties. Moreover, steel and synthetic fibers are added to improve the postcracking behavior while the traditional bar reinforcement enhances the tensile performance. This makes EAFS concrete substantially ductile compared to normal concrete, which contributes to a higher structural resiliency, and hence minimizes functionality disruptions. However the use of fiber and bar -reinforced EAFS concrete in structures is still limited due to the uncertainties introduced by EAFS and fibers. This justify the development of advanced modeling techniques (ie. Finite element Analysis, FEA), which can be used to predict the behavior of EAFS concrete structures at the designing stage. This work build up from the extensive work of the coauthors in the testing of EAFS concrete and, more recently, in the developed FEA of fiber-reinforced EAFS concrete. In this paper the modeling of bar reinforcement is added to the FEA to study the behavior of structural elements made with fiber-reinforced EAFS concrete. The presented FEA is validated through full-scale experiments (four-point flexural test), which shows that the presented FEA is appropriate. The presented numerical model enables to study phenomena difficult to study from experiments or in-situ such as the cracking. It is worth noting that the addition of steel fibers reduced the crack mouth opening displacement in 29.3% and the depth of the cracks in 12.7% in the presented EAFS concrete.Item A simple experimental and simulation framework for the design of steel fiber reinforced concrete(International Centre for Numerical Methods in Engineering, CIMNE, 2020) Garcia, Aratz; Ortega-Lopez, Vanesa; Chica, J. A.; Aguirre, Miquel; Owen, Roger; de Borst, Rene; Reese, Jason; Pearce, Chris; Tecnalia Research & Innovation; SGSteel fiber reinforced concrete (SFRC) has proven to provide excellent mechanical performance in terms of increased strength, ductility and energy absorption capacity [1]. These enhancements are provided by bridging phenomena and multiple-cracking distribution [1]. The numerical simulation of its mechanical behavior cannot be carried out with standard commercial codes yet, and its numerical simulation is mostly limited to academic research. With the goal of carrying out engineering design and optimization SFRC structures, this paper presents the implementation of an experimental and numerical framework for the design of structures by means of SFRC. The presented work is based on previous results by other authors in modelling SFRC by means of an efficient multilevel computational framework [2], in which interface elements characterizing the bridging and cracking phenomena [3] are embedded within pre-existing Finite Element Method (FEM) codes. This framework will be implemented and validated in existing in-house FEM codes and in an open-source FEM package. In parallel, adequate experimentation has been carried out to define input parameters [4] and, validate the numerical algorithm. Overall, the framework intends to provide a general guideline for the efficient design of SFRC structures.