Assessing the role of polypropylene fibres on tensile strength of alccofine and silicafume blended high strength concrete
Authors :- P Patel, E Patel, K Patel, M Mungule
Publication :- Materials Today: Proceedings, 2023.
In the present study, the M40 grade of concrete is designed with binder materials comprising of 70% cement and 30% Supplementary Cementitious Materials (SCM). Of the 30% SCM, flyash C (FA) accounts for 20% whereas the remaining 10% is either Silicafume (SF) or Alccofine (AL), respectively. In addition to binder materials, the polypropylene fibres with weight proportions ranging from 0 to 0.5% of binder materials is added. For unreinforced specimens, the split tension strength at 28 and 90 days curing period is 3.80 and 4.36 MPa, respectively for AL blended concrete whereas it is 3.93 and 4.16 MPa for SF blended concrete. For incrementing proportion of polypropylene fibres, the split tensile strength and strain energy of both SF and AL blended concrete increases with increasing curing period. For AL blended concrete, the increment in tensile strength at 90 days curing period ranges from 6 to 20% while the strain energy increase is upto 120%. The study confirms that the inclusion of polypropylene fibres is more effective towards improving tensile strength and energy absorption capacity of AL blended concrete than SF blended concrete. In addition to tensile strength and strain energy, optical microscopy images have been used to evaluate the effect of polypropylene fibres on porosity and calcium hydroxide (CH) content.