Experiments on Tensile and Shear Characteristics of Amorphous Micro Steel (AMS) Fibre-Reinforced Cementitious Composites

Amorphous micro-steel (AMS) fibre made by cooling of liquid pig iron is flexible, light and durable to corrosion, then to be compatible with high flowable and disperable states of mixing as well as high ductile post-cracked performances to apply in fibre-reinforced cementitious composites. In the current research, AMS fibre-reinforced cementitious composites based on cement and alkali-activated ground granulated blast furnace slag mortars were newly manufactured and evaluated for the strength and ductile characteristics mainly by direct tensile and shear transfer tests in the variation in the volume of AMS fibres with two different lengths of 15.0 and 30.0 mm. As a result, it was found that 1.0–1.25% fibre volume fractions were recommendable for AMS fibre-reinforced cementitious composites to maximize direct tensile strength, ductile tensile strain, and shear strength of the composites. However, a further fraction of AMS fibre lowered these mechanical characteristics. Simultaneously, it could be said that AMS fibre-reinforced cementitious composites exhibited up to about 3.7 times higher in direct tensile strength and up to 2.3 times higher in shear strength, compared to AMS fibre-free specimens.