ENHANCING THE PROPERTIES OF

CONCRETE BY ADDING HAIR FIBER

Team member

1. Rohit chaudhary

2. Santosh fozdar

3. Satish chand

4. Shekhar yadav

Objective

Develop suitable mix design.

Develop characterization tests for the fiber.

Demonstrate the use of steel fiber from use of waste natural fiber.

For checking the effect on properties and strength of concrete by using hair fiber as

reinforcement.

Fiber

Fiber Reinforced Concrete can be defined as a composite material consisting of mixtures of

cement, mortar or concrete and discontinuous, discrete, uniformly dispersed suitable fibers. Fiber

reinforced concrete are of different types and properties with many advantages. Continuous

meshes, woven fabrics and long wires or rods are not considered to be discrete fibers. Fiber is a

small piece of reinforcing material possessing certain characteristics properties. They can be

circular or flat. The fiber is often described by a convenient parameter called “aspect ratio”. The

aspect ratio of the fiber is the ratio of its length to its diameter. Typical aspect ratio ranges from

30 to 150.

Effect of Fibers in Concrete

Fibers are usually used in concrete to control plastic shrinkage cracking and drying shrinkage

cracking. They also lower the permeability of concrete and thus reduce bleeding of water. Some

types of fibers produce greater impact, abrasion and shatter resistance in concrete. Generally

fibers do not increase the flexural strength of concrete, so it can not replace moment resisting or

structural steel reinforcement. Some fibers reduce the strength of concrete. Some recent research

indicated that using fibers in concrete has limited effect on the impact resistance of concrete

materials. This finding is very important since traditionally people think the ductility increases

when concrete reinforced with fibers. The results also pointed out that the micro fibers is better

in impact resistance compared with the longer fibers.

Necessity of Fiber Reinforced Concrete:

1. It increases the tensile strength of the concrete.

2. It reduce the air voids and water voids the inherent porosity of gel.

3. It increases the durability of the concrete.

4. Fibers such as graphite and glass have excellent resistance to creep, while the same is not

true for most resins. Therefore, the orientation and volume of fibers have a significant

influence on the creep performance of rebars/tendons.

5. Reinforced concrete itself is a composite material, where the reinforcement acts as the

strengthening fiber and the concrete as the matrix. It is therefore imperative that the

behavior under thermal stresses for the two materials be similar so that the differential

deformations of concrete and the reinforcement are minimized.

6. It has been recognized that the addition of small, closely spaced and uniformly dispersed

fibers to concrete would act as crack arrester and would substantially improve its static

and dynamic properties.

Factors Affecting Properties of Fiber Reinforced Concrete

Fiber reinforced concrete is the composite material containing fibers in the cement matrix in an

orderly manner or randomly distributed manner. Its properties would obviously, depends upon

the efficient transfer of stress between matrix and the fibers. The factors are briefly discussed

below:

1. Relative Fiber Matrix Stiffness

2. Volume of Fibers

3. Aspect Ratio of the Fiber

4. Orientation of Fibers

5. Workability and Compaction of Concrete

6. Size of Coarse Aggregate

7. Mixing

Fiber reinforced concrete

Fiber reinforced concrete (FRC) is concrete containing fibrous material which

increases its structural integrity. It contains short discrete fibers that are uniformly

distributed and randomly oriented. Fibers include steel fibers, glass fibers, synthetic

fibers and natural fibers. Within these different fibers that character of fiber

reinforced concrete changes with varying concretes, fiber materials, geometries,

distribution, orientation and densities.

Different Types of Fiber Reinforced Concrete

Following are the different type of fibers generally used in the construction

industries.

Steel Fiber Reinforced Concrete

Polypropylene Fiber Reinforced (PFR) cement mortar & concrete

GFRC Glass Fiber Reinforced Concrete

Asbestos Fibers

Carbon Fibers

Organic Fibers

Organic Fibers/Natural fiber:

Organic fiber such as polypropylene or natural fiber may be chemically more inert than either

steel or glass fibers. They are also cheaper, especially if natural. A large volume of vegetable

fiber may be used to obtain a multiple cracking composite. The problem of mixing and uniform

dispersion may be solved by adding a super plasticizer. We prefer hair fiber.

How to perform

First of all we theortically study about the hair fiber reinforced concrete by the help of

internet and books.

Prepare a list of all material required for the project.

Then after we collect the all material which are used in our project.

We calculate the estimation and costing of project.

Select the grade of concrete and we prefer M20 grade of concrete.

Preparation of concrete.

We uniformly mix and distribute the hair fiber in concrete.

Now lubricate the inside of the mould thoroughly with lubricating agent, which may be

engine oil or Grease.

The mould is filled with concrete in three layers and each layer is temped 25 times by

using temping rod.

Then we cast the cubes by using hair fiber reinforced concrete.

After 24 hours we remove the cubes from the moulds.

Curing of cubes for 7 to 28 days.

After curing we perform tests on cubes.

We perform following tests on cubes and cuboids.

a. Flexural strength test.

b. Compressive strength test.

After testing we record and note the all readings.

And we prepare a table for effects on properties of concrete by adding hair fiber.

And prepare estimation and cost chart.

Conclusion

The total energy absorbed in fiber as measured by the area under the load deflection

curve is at least 10 to 40 times higher for fiber reinforced concrete than that of plain

concrete.

Addition of hair fiber to conventionally reinforced beams increased the fatigue life and

decreased the cracks width under fatigue loading.

At elevated temperature HFRC have more strength both in compression and tensio