Orienting Fibers by Extrusion in Reinforced Reactive Powder Concrete

This paper deals with the problem of orienting short metal fibers (12 mm length, aspect ratio 60) in a reactive powder concrete during an extrusion process to manufacture reinforced tubes. By choosing an appropriate geometry for the die it is possible to orient the fibers in an orthoradial direction, which is the most efficient if one wishes to reinforce the tube for an internal pressure loading. This result is obtained with both a theoretical and an experimental approach. In a theoretical framework the authors carried out numerical modeling with a constitutive behavior deduced from the anisotropic suspensions theory. This calculus enabled the authors to design the shape of the die. Tubes have then been extruded and the fibers' orientation has been measured with optical microscopy.