Structurae

Computertomographic Investigation of Steel Fibre Reinforced Sprayed Concrete using Multi-Dimensional Transfer Functions
The composite material steel fibre reinforced concrete or steel fibre reinforced sprayed concrete (SFRS) is widely used in geotechnics. For the modelling of the mechanical behaviour the knowledge of the distribution and orientation of the fibres in the concrete is of particular importance. For a bachelor thesis the steel fibres in drill cores were investigated by computed tomography (CT) at the Austrian Foundry Research Institute (ÖGI). The orientation of each fibre was calculated using a STL-interface and further software tools. The results were statistically evaluated and graphically represented using Schmidt's net. This time consuming (expensive) method was automated by a post-processing of VRVis. With that tool the steel fibres in the sample can be explored, classified and visually examined in real-time regarding their orientation in two angles. Different possibilities of statistical evaluation can be implemented. A real-time direction sphere histogram (DSH), comparable to Schmidt's net in 3D allows the user to recognise the distribution of orientations of the selected fibres at a glance. The colour-coding of the different orientations is also used for the 3D-volume-view of the fibres, to easily identify the spatial distribution of orientations in the SFRS sample.