© 2014 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest ISSN 2062-0810/$20.00 Int. Rev. Appl. Sci. Eng. 5 (2014) 1, 9–19 DOI: 10.1556/IRASE.5.2014.1.2 1. General remarks to fibre reinforced concrete Fibre reinforced concrete is a widely used construc- tion material in civil engineering [1]. Fibre reinforced concrete is composed of plain concrete made of port- land cement, with or without silica fume or fly ash, fine and course aggregates, water, additives and ran- domly distributed or oriented short, discrete fibre re- inforcement [1–3]. Fibres are made of several materials such as steel, polypropylene, glass, natural, etc. with differ- ent configurations. However, in civil engineering ap- plications generally steel or polypropylene fibres are used. Fibre shape can be straight, deformed or collo- cated fibres, hooked, crimped, and paddled, undulat- ed, etc. (Table 1) [1, 4–8]. Some fibre types are glued together with water soluble glue in order to get much better fibre distribution and workable concrete mix [4, 9]. Cross-section of fibres can be circular, square, crescent-shaped or irregular [1, 10–11]. The common size is among 10–60 mm (less than 75 mm), diam- eter 0.1–0.6 mm, fibre content 0.5–2.0 V%, tensile strength 345–1380 N/mm 2 , aspect ratio (fibre length vs. fibre diameter) 30–100 in case of steel fibres [4, 12]. Concrete grades used for fibre reinforced con- crete may vary from normal strength concrete to high strength, high performance concrete [13]. Other ce- ment based materials such as mortals may also be re- inforced by fibres [14–16]. Mechanical properties of fibre reinforced con- cretes depend on the mechanical properties of concrete mix and the used fibre type [1]. The main purpose of fibre application is to increase energy absorption ca- pacity or ductility as well as fracture toughness of plain concrete [17]. For this reason, many airport run- ways, tunnels, bridge decks, pipes, industrial floors, etc. were built in the last two decades applying also fibre reinforcement [18]. STRUCTURAL PERFORMANCE OF STEEL FIBRE REINFORCED CONCRETE – PART I. OVERVIEW OF THE EXPERIMENTAL PROGRAM I. KOVÁCS Department of Civil Engineering, University of Debrecen, Debrecen, Hungary E-mail: dr.kovacs.imre@gmail.com The papers of the series deal with experimental characterisation of mechanical as well as structural properties of different steel fibre reinforced concretes that can be used for several structural applications. An extensive experimental programme (six years) has been developed to investigate the effect of steel fibre reinforcement on the mechanical performance and structural behaviour of concrete specimens. Specimens and test methods were selected to be able to detect realistic behaviour of the material, representing clear effect on the structural performance. Material compositions, test methods, type of test specimens will be detailed in the presented paper (Part I). Furthermore, compressive strength (Part II), stress–strain relationship (Part II), splitting strength (Part III) and toughness (Part IV) will also be discussed. In the light of the motivation to determine the structural performances of 1D concrete structural element affected by steel fibre reinforcement, bending and shear behaviour (Part V) as well as serviceability state (Part VI) of steel fibre reinforced concrete beams will be analysed. Since normal force – prestressing force – can affectively be used to improve the struc- tural performances of RC element flexural tests were carried out on prestressed pretensioned steel fibre reinforced concrete beams (Part VII). Moreover, focusing on the in-plane state of stresses for 2D structures, behaviour of steel fibre reinforced concrete deep beams in shear and steel fibre reinforced concrete slabs (Part VIII) in bending will be explained. Finally, based on the wide range of the experimental and analytical studies on the presented field, a new material model for the 1D uniaxial behaviour (Part IX) and its possible extension to the 3D case (Part X) will be described hereafter. All papers will put emphasis on the short literature review of the last four decades. Keywords: concrete, steel fibres, steel fibre reinforcement, fibre orientation, steel fibre reinforced concrete, steel fibre reinforced prestressed pretensioned concrete, specimens, formworks