Ultra-High Performance Concrete
Steel fiber reinforced reactive powder concrete (SFR-RPC) was first
introduced by the French in the mid 1990’s with the mechanical properties of
their RPC demonstrated compressive strength greater than 200 MPa and modulus of
rupture of 25-50 MPa. Today, this type of concrete is more commonly known as the
ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) instead of reactive powder concrete (RPC)
due to this composite tends to exhibit superior properties such as advanced
strength, durability and long-term stability when comparing to high-performance
concrete (HPC). Although this technology has been developed in recent decades,
yet, its presence still remains in the infant stage for many developing nations.
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Since then, many researchers/organizations around the world
have developed concrete that could be classified as UHPC (such as
Ductal®, Ceracem®, BSI®, Densit®).
Although there are differences among the type of these UHPC, there also are many
overall similarities. The Association Française de Génie Civil (AFGC, 2002)
indicated that UHPC tends to have the following properties: Compressive strength
that is greater than 150 MPa, internal fiber reinforcement to ensure non-brittle
behaviour, and high binder content with special aggregate. Further more, UHPC
tends to have a very low water-binder ratio and can achieved sufficient
rheological properties through a combination of optimized granular packing and
the addition of high-range water reducing admixtures.