Fresh, flexural and mechanical performance of polyamide and polypropylene based macro-synthetic fiber-reinforced concretes

Abstract

The brittleness of concrete can be overcome by fiber reinforcement that controls the crack mechanisms of concrete. Corrosion-related durability issues can be prevented by synthetic fibers (SFs), while macro synthetic fibers have proven to be particularly effective to provide ductility and toughness after cracks. This experimental study has been performed to investigate the comparative flexural and mechanical behavior of four different macro-synthetic fiber-reinforced concretes (SFRCs). Two polyamide fibers (SF1 and SF2) with different aspect ratios and two different polypropylene fiber types (SF3 and SF4) were used in production of SFRCs. Four different SFRCs and reference concrete were compared for their influences on the toughness, compressive strength, elastic modulus, flexural strength, residual strength and splitting tensile strength. The outcomes of the study reveal that the flowability of reference mixture decreases after addition of SFs and the air voids of all SFRC mixtures increased with the addition of macro-synthetic fibers except SFRC2 mixture whose air content is the same as the reference mixture. The results also revealed that with the inclusion of SFs, 11.34% reduction in the cube compressive strength was noted for SFRC4 based on that of reference specimens and both reference concrete and SFRC exhibited nearly similar cylindrical compressive strength. Results illustrated that SFRC1 and SFRC4 mixtures consistently provide the highest and lowest flexural toughness values of 36.4 joule and 27.7 joule respectively. The toughness values of SFRC3 and SFRC4 are very near to each other.