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Synopsis This paper deals with an analytical and experimental investigation of the mechanical properties of cement mortar reinforced with randomly oriented short steel wires. Analytically, the material is treated as a composite and its properties are derived by the laws of mixture. The effect of random orientation of the short wires is taken into consideration by the introduction of dimensionless factors which are derived on the assumption that the geometric centres of the wires are uniformly distributed in space and that any wire has an equal probability of being oriented at any angle to the direction of the applied stress. Explicit expressions are given for the moduli of elasticity and the ultimate strengths in tension and compression. In bending and torsion, the composite is idealized as a bi-linear material to describe its behaviour in the uncracked and in the cracked range provided that the volume fraction and the length of wires used exceed certain values which are suggested. Experiments were conducted and the results obtained are shown to be in good agreement with theoretically predicted values.

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