Qualification of a HPFRC Material by Means of the Italian Guidelines

High performance fibre reinforced concrete (HPFRC) is a composite material characterized by improved toughness due to the presence of fibres bridging the cracks. At the present stage of evolution, several codes and design guidelines are available for the application of such material in the construction field. As a consequence, special attention has been paid on the creation of a single reference for the identification, qualification, technical evaluation certification and acceptance control criteria of the FRC commercially available. This paper presents the results collected during a campaign for the initial qualification of a HPFRC mixture. The tests are aimed at certifying the product performance following the indications reported on the recently emitted Italian guidelines. Besides the mandatory initial type test (ITT) further optional tests are performed, e.g. against freezing and thawing actions. Eventually, the collected data are used to define the material constitutive model used to design FRC elements, based on the indications reported on widespread accepted codes.