MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF COCONUT FIBER-REINFORCED CONCRETE

Author(s):  
Gino Ng ◽  
Girum Urgessa ◽  
Yared Shifferaw ◽  
Harianto Hardjasaputra

The use of natural fibers in concrete has significantly increased in recent years as a result of the push for sustainable construction. Coconut fibers, also known as coir fibers, have been used as natural fibers in concrete, particularly in some parts of Asia. This paper presents an experimental study that investigates the use of coconut fibers in concrete. Two baseline concrete mix designs were selected based on design standards with a water-cement ratio of 0.4 and 0.5 respectively. For each baseline mix design, four 20 cm x 20 cm x 1 cm concrete plates were constructed by varying the percentage of coconut fibers by weight of cement. The fiber contents studied are 0%, 0.1%, 0.175%, and 0.25%. The concrete plates were then tested to determine the mechanical properties of the coconut fiber-reinforced concrete and comparisons were made with the mix designs with 0% coconut fiber content. The results show that adding coconut fibers increases the flexural strength of concrete plates. This is particularly beneficial for low scale construction applications such as those in concrete tile production. For both mix designs, adding 0.25% of coconut fibers increased the flexural strength of the concrete plates by 90% when compared to concrete with no coconut fibers.

Materials ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (22) ◽  
pp. 5202
Author(s):  
Mohammad Iqbal Khan ◽  
Wasim Abbass ◽  
Mohammad Alrubaidi ◽  
Fahad K. Alqahtani

High-strength concrete is used to provide quality control for concrete structures, yet it has the drawback of brittleness. The inclusion of fibers improves the ductility of concrete but negatively affects the fresh properties of fiber-reinforced concrete. The effects of different fine to coarse aggregate ratios on the fresh and hardened properties of steel fiber reinforced concrete were investigated in this study. Mixtures were prepared with various fine to coarse aggregate (FA/CA) ratios incorporating 1% steel fiber content (by volume) at constant water to cement ratio. The workability, unit weight, and temperature of the concrete in the fresh state, and the mechanical properties of steel-fiber-reinforced concrete (SFRC) were investigated. The inclusion of fiber in concrete influenced the mobility of concrete in the fresh state by acting as a barrier to the movement of coarse aggregate. It was observed that the concrete with an FA/CA ratio above 0.8 showed better flowability in the fresh state, whilst an above 0.9 FA/CA ratio requires excessive superplasticizer to maintain the flowability of the mixtures. The compressive and flexural strength of SFRC increased with an increase in the FA/CA ratio by around 10% and 28%, respectively. Experimental values of compressive strength and flexural strength showed good agreement, however, modulus of elasticity demonstrated slightly higher values. The experimentally obtained measurements of the mechanical properties of SFRC conformed reasonably well with the available existing prediction equations, and further enabled establishing predictive isoresponse interactive equations within the scope of the investigation domain.


2009 ◽  
Vol 610-613 ◽  
pp. 69-75
Author(s):  
Yuan Hua ◽  
Tai Quan Zhou

Different kinds of fiber are used to reinforce the concrete to improve the concrete mechanical properties. The high modulus and high flexibility fibers are often used to reinforce in the cement base, which leads to the higher performance compound cement based materials. In the paper, the carbon fiber and glass fiber material are used as flexibility reinforced materials. The polypropylene fiber and the polyethylene fiber are used as strength reinforced materials. The combinations of the flexibility reinforced fiber and strength reinforced fiber are chosen as C-P HF (Carbon and Polypropylene Hybrid Fiber) and G-Pe HF (Glass and Polyethylene Hybrid Fiber). The concrete mixture ratio and the fiber-reinforced amount are determined to the author’s previous study. The relationship between compressive strength, flexural strength and length/diameter aspect ratio of fiber for the carbon and polypropylene hybrid fiber reinforced concrete (C-P HFRC), and for the glass and polyethylene hybrid fiber reinforced concrete (G--Pe HFRC) was tested and discussed. The testing results show that length/diameter aspect ratio of fiber obviously affects the flexural strength of C-P HFRC and G-Pe HFRC, though the compressive strength is slightly affected by the length-diameter aspect ratio.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chaohua Jiang ◽  
Yizhi Wang ◽  
Wenwen Guo ◽  
Chen Jin ◽  
Min Wei

With great mechanical properties and corrosion resistance, amorphous alloy fiber (AAF) is a highly anticipated material in the fiber-reinforced concrete (FRC) field. In this study, the mechanical properties of AAFRC such as compressive strength, tensile strength, and flexural strength were examined. The comparison and analysis between AAFRC and steel fiber-reinforced concrete (SFRC) were also carried out. The results show that adding fibers significantly improves the concrete strength and toughness index. Compared with plain concrete, the compressive strength, splitting tensile strength, and flexural strength of AAFRC increase by 8.21–16.72%, 10.4–32.8%, and 18.12–45.21%, respectively. Meanwhile, the addition of AAF with a greater tensile strength and larger unit volume quantity improves the splitting tensile strength and flexural strength of concrete more noticeably than that of SF. Adding AAF improves the ductility of concrete more significantly in comparison to the SF. AAFRC shows great interfacial bonding performance as well. A prediction equation for the strength of AAFRC was proposed, which verified good accuracy calibrated based on the test results.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 169-176
Author(s):  
Xiaohu Luo

In order to improve the application effect of steel fiber reinforced concrete (SFRC) in road bridge construction, the mechanical properties of SFRC with different fiber content were analyzed. The SFRC specimens with 0%, 0.5%, 1%, 1.5% and 2% fiber content were designed, and the mechanical properties were tested. The results showed that the compressive strength first increased and then decreased with the increase of fiber content, and the maximum compressive strength of SFRC1.5 reached 40.86 MPa, increasing by 7.19%; the increase amplitude of tensile strength of SFRC1.5 was 73.04%, which was the most obvious; the flexural strength of SFRC increased with the increase of fiber content, and the flexural strength of SFRC2 was 9.78 MPa, increasing by 94.43%. It is concluded from the experimental results of a case study that SFRC1.5 presents the optimal overall mechanical properties and is more suitable for road bridge construction.


1990 ◽  
Vol 211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitsuru Kubo ◽  
Mitsuyasu Mashima ◽  
Kaoru Iwamoto

AbstractFiber reinforced concrete was developed to improve the mechanical properties of cementitious materials. Especially by using FRC, the structural mechanical properties after the maximum load can be improved. In the present study the mechanical properties of the fiber reinforced concrete are evaluated by investigating the influence of various parameters on the complete load-deflection curve, including the descending branch.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tehmina Ayub ◽  
Nasir Shafiq ◽  
M. Fadhil Nuruddin

This paper presents the mechanical properties and the microstructure of the high performance fiber reinforced concrete (HPFRC) containing up to 3% volume fraction of chopped Basalt fibers. Three types of the concrete were prepared, out of which, the first type was prepared by utilizing 100% cement content. The other two types of the concrete were prepared by replacing 10% cement content with silica fume and the locally produced metakaolin. Using each concrete type, four mixes were prepared in which Basalt fibers were added in the range of 0–3%; that is, total twelve mixes of the HPFRC concrete were prepared. From each of the twelve concrete mixes, total twelve specimens were cast to determine the mechanical properties of the HPFRC including compressive strength (cube and cylinder), splitting tensile strength, and the flexural strength. In this way, a total of 108 specimens were cast and tested in this study. Test results showed that the addition of the Basalt fibers significantly increased the tensile splitting strength and the flexural strength of the HPFRC, while there was slight improvement in the compressive strength with the addition of Basalt fibers. The microstructure of HPFRC was examined to determine the interfacial transition zone (ITZ) between the aggregates and the paste by using field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM), which showed the improvement of the ITZ due to the addition of the Basalt fibers.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 6734-6742
Author(s):  
A. Syamsir ◽  
S. M. Mubin ◽  
N. M. Nor ◽  
V. Anggraini ◽  
S. Nagappan ◽  
...  

This study investigated the combine effect of 0.2 % drink cans and steel fibers with volume fractions of 0%, 0.5%, 1%, 1.5%, 2%, 2.5% and 3% to the mechanical properties and impact resistance of concrete. Hooked-end steel fiber with 30 mm and 0.75 mm length and diameter, respectively was selected for this study.  The drinks cans fiber were twisted manually in order to increase friction between fiber and concrete. The results of the experiment showed that the combination of steel fibers and drink cans fibers improved the strength performance of concrete, especially the compressive strength, flexural strength and indirect tensile strength. The results of the experiment showed that the combination of steel fibers and drink cans fibers improved the compressive strength, flexural strength and indirect tensile strength by 2.3, 7, and 2 times as compare to batch 1, respectively. Moreover, the impact resistance of fiber reinforced concrete has increase by 7 times as compared to non-fiber concretes. Moreover, the impact resistance of fiber reinforced concrete consistently gave better results as compared to non-fiber concretes. The fiber reinforced concrete turned more ductile as the dosage of fibers was increased and ductility started to decrease slightly after optimum fiber dosage was reached. It was found that concrete with combination of 2% steel and 0.2% drink cans fibers showed the highest compressive, split tensile, flexural as well as impact strength.    


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