ABSTRACT
The use of fiber-reinforced shotcrete (FRS) is widely used for the construction of tunnel linings in highway, mining and hydroelectric projects in Latin America, which are designed using their flexural toughness determined by testing round panels. However, these tests are complex to perform and require large specimens. Alternatively, the Barcelona test, which consists of subjecting a cylinder to double punching, is quite simple and requires a relatively small specimen, it has been proposed to simplify the systematic control of the FRS on site. For this, it has been necessary to establish a correlation between the flexural toughness and the energy dissipated by the cylinder subjected to the Barcelona test. This paper presents the results of a preliminary research carried out using the results of the control tests of three mines in Mexico, where tunnel linings have been built using shotcrete reinforced with low amounts of synthetic fibers. The differences obtained between the estimated and experimental values lower than 10%.
