In the last decades, technical and scientific efforts have been done to increase
the concrete strength, based on the assumption that more economic, lightweight, durable
and good looking structures can be built. This strength enhancement, however, has been
obtained by increasing the compactness of the concrete internal structure, resulting
concretes with a void percentage much lower than the values observed in concretes of
current strength classes. Research and fire accidents have shown that the concrete failure
of structures exposed to fire is as explosive as high is the concrete strength class, since
the concrete brittleness increases with the concrete compressive strength.
In the present work a fiber reinforced concrete of enhanced fire resistance was developed
and its properties are characterized by experimental research. This concrete is intended to
have enough resistance for the most structural engineering applications, while the
performance of the fibrous reinforcement system was evaluated in terms of verifying its
possibilities for replacing, partially or totally, conventional reinforcement used in
concrete precast tunnel segments.The authors wish to acknowledge the support provided by the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) by means of the project POCTI/ECM/57518/2004 “FICOFIRE - High performance fiber reinforced concrete of enhanced fire resistance”, as well as the support of Spie Batignolles Company
