Evaluation of maturity method for steel fiber reinforced concrete

The evaluation of steel-fiber reinforced concrete using the maturity method was investigated in this study. There were four different volume fractions of fibers (0, 0.5, 1 and 1.5 by volume of concrete) and three different curing temperatures (8°C, 22°C and 32°C) considered. The compressive strength and flexural strength were tested at 1, 3, 7, 10, 14 and 28 days for all of the volume fractions of fibers and at the different curing temperatures. The results show that as the volume fraction of fiber increased from 0 to 1.5%, the compressive and flexural strengths increased by 14% and 35%, respectively, compared to plain concrete. The maturity method was used to predict the compressive and flexural strengths. Four different equations (linear hyperbolic, parabolic hyperbolic, logarithmic and exponential) were used to predict the compressive and flexural strengths. All of the predicted models have good correlations with the experimental results for both compressive and flexural strengths. Moreover, to predict the compressive and flexural strengths using the maturity method, the apparent activation energies were calculated.