Evaluation of a Tramway’s Track Slab in Conventionally Reinforced Concrete or Steel Fibre Concrete

Abstract: The dominant reinforcement used widely for concrete structures is conventional steel bars (rebars). Nevertheless, the perpetual effort toward evolution and development could not exclude the engineering field, thus new innovative and sophisticated methods are introduced. It is true that, due to lack of extended regulations and standards, the fibre reinforced concrete (FRC) was limited to non-structural applications. However, the last years the situation is changing rapidly and already the applications of FRC include actual structural members. The subject of the current thesis was a tramway’s track slab from “Sparvag City” project in Stockholm. The aim was to evaluate the track slab, in terms of alternative reinforcing ways. In particular three models were examined; model I – conventional reinforcement, model II – steel fibre reinforced concrete (SFRC) and model III – SFRC with conventional reinforcement. The assessment was performed from structural, regulations – compliance, economic and ergonomic perspective. A static linear analysis of the track slab was performed using Abaqus; a finite element analysis (FEA) software. The track slab was subjected only to mechanical loads (selfweight and traffic actions) and thus, the design internal forces were extracted. Thereafter, Eurocode 2 (EN 1992-1-1, 2004) and Swedish standards for FRC structures (SS 812310:2014) were utilized for the reinforcement design of the models. The design was performed in ultimate limit state (ULS), for bending moment and shear resistance, and in serviceability limit state (SLS), for stress limitation and crack control. Model I and III were successfully designed abiding with the respective regulations and requirements, while “only fibres” model was considered valid only for bending moment resistance according to SS 812310:2014. Consequently only models I and III were compared with each other. From the economic comparison it was obtained that model I was less expensive than model III, but on the other hand its construction time was larger. Furthermore model III contained significantly less total rebars’ mass in comparison to model I. This particularity was crucial for the ergonomic assessment. The human factors, that were relevant to the ergonomic assessment, improved the quality of the comparison and the extracted inferences, but also introduced aspects impossible to be put against economic facts as an equal quantity. Thus, there was not a final proposal as the best solution for the thesis subject.