Study of concrete behaviour under fire has really increased since the occurence of several fires in tunnels such as the Chunnel or the Mont-Blanc tunnel. Fire resistance of concrete is a very important subject because the possible spalling coupled with a decrease of the strength of the material can deeply weaken the structures. For decades the fire resistance field of ordinary concrete and high performance concrete was studied experimentally and theorically. However more recent materials such as ultra-high performance fibre reinforced concrete (UHPFRC), for which spalling phenomenon is emphasized and whose high temperature mechanical behaviour has not been studied so much. The present study is aimed to study a particular UHPFRC, the BCV®, supplied by Vicat. The results enable to better understand the effenciency of polypropylene fibres compared to other synthetic fibres, thanks to an original experimental approach coupled with a study at the microscopic scale. The latter consists in various scanning electron microscope analysis and mercury intrusion porosimetry. This first part is followed by a wide number of experimental results which characterize the mechanical behaviour of BCV® for a range of temperatures from 20°C to 1100°C. Experiments in such testing conditions are not common for this material. The work achieved contributes to a better understanding of the high performance behaviour of UHPFRC. It reveals also that the evolution with temperature of main mechanical characteristics (bending strength, compression strength and Young Modulus) is really close to those of ordinary concretes. The results of this study contributes to a better knowledge of ultra-high performance fibre reinforced concrete under high temperature.
