What Are The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Self-Compacting Concrete

Concrete, a strong, durable material composed of cement, aggregate, and water, is the most used building material in the world. The improvement of concrete is needed and essential in order to increase the performance and sustainability. Good quality concrete requires adequate compaction during casting by skilled labours, which have numerous disadvantages. Self-compacting concrete (SCC), with self-compacting ability enables the concrete to self-levelled and compacted under its own weight without internal or external compaction. The highly fluid nature of SCC makes it suitable for placing in difficult conditions and in sections with congested reinforcement. Use of SCC can also help minimise hearing-related damages on the worksite that are induced by vibration of concrete. Another advantage of SCC is that the time required to place large sections is considerably reduced. SCC has an ultimate load bearing capacity under compression but the material is weak in tension. That is why steel bars are embedded in the concrete for the structures to carry tensile loads. The steel reinforced bars take the tensile load when the concrete cracks in tension. On another hand, the concrete protects the steel reinforced bars from the environment and prevents corrosion. However, the cracks in the concrete form a major problem which affects the durability

Over the last three decades, significant studies have been executed to examine the impact of steel fibres as reinforcing matrix on the mechanical properties and impact resistance. The previous findings revealed that steel fibres significantly improves the mechanical properties, impact resistance and crack resistance of the reinforced concrete. Steel fibres bridge gap between adjacent surfaces of existing micro-crack, delay crack formation and limit crack propagation by reducing the crack tip opening displacement. This mechanism is known as a bridging