COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE EFFECT OF ALTERNATIVE FIBER MATERIALS ON COMPRESSIVE, SPLITTING TENSILE, AND FLEXURAL STRENGTHS OF CONCRETE GRADE C-25

Abstract

Concrete is deficient in tensile strength, brittle, and has little ability when subjected to bending forces. The use of permanent reinforcing in concrete or regular reinforced concrete increases the structure's strength and ductility, raising its long-term functionality. However, it was challenging to obtain desirable qualities including durability, flexibility, crack control, and absorption of energy because steel was found in same part of the portions of the structural concrete. To address these challenges, construction sites that were both ecologically harmless and energy-saving were used the low-cost, durable materials for construction. In order to improve the compressive, splitting tensile, and flexural strengths of concrete, it was decided that polypropylene, polyethylene, and Ensete Ventricosum’s fiber would be used as reinforcement. This research compared the conventional concrete or non-FRC with FRC for determining the effects of fibers on the mechanical qualities of concrete and to identity the most effective fiber in terms of cost-performance ratio. A mix made for normal concrete or controller group C-25MPa class concrete according to ASTM was used for the 270 specimen to determine the concrete's compressive strength, flexural strength, and tensile strength and analyzed using tables and graphs through the version 2016 of Microsoft Word and Excel results for descriptive and Repeated Measures/paired samples t-tests analysis for inferential statics in the SPSS software to compare fiber-reinforced versus conventional concrete strength. From the results of this technique, it was determined that adding a portion of polypropylene fiber was more effective than the addition of polyethylene and Ensete Ventric sum’s fiber, that 0.33% of the fiber percentage was superior to 0.165% and 0.495% of the amount of fiber, and that polypropylene fibers with 0.33% of fiber content were more effective in terms of cost-to performance ratio than the other mix designs.