CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 INTRODUCTION

According to the researches, the increase of formability and bending strength are the

extra advantages of adding the fibers to the concrete. Two kinds of fiber used very often in

the concrete are: steel fiber and polypropylene in fiber. The evaporation of concrete surface

water is a factor of creating the contract paste fracture in the concrete which leads to the

formation of tension stress since the concrete starts to strengthen[ CITATION Kol18 \l 1033 ].

The fiber dispersion into concrete is one of the technique to improve the building properties

of concrete. The fibers are manufactured either by the pulling wire procedure with circular

cross section or by extruding the plastic film with rectangular cross-section. They appear

either as fibrillated bundles, mono filament. The fiber bundles are cut into specified lengths

and fibrillated. In monofilament fibers, the addition of buttons at the ends of the fiber

increases the pull out load[ CITATION Div161 \l 1033 ]. The major advantage of fiber in

reinforcement concrete is to transform a brittle concrete into a pseudo ductile material.

Adding fibers in concrete can arrest micro cracks which causes gradual failure. The fibers

from cheap or waste materials may be used for manufacture of structural units with cement

mortar composites have great potential[ CITATION Sal16 \l 1033 ]. It is a well-known fact that

the primary function of the fibers in a FRC material is to act as crack arresters and crack

closers, to ensure that distributed and not localized cracking takes place during loading, and

to stabilize the distributed cracking[ CITATION HSt06 \l 1033 ].

In order to overcome the inherent drawbacks of ordinary concrete, such as low

tensile strength, low deformation capacity and poor post-cracking ductility, etc., fibers are

introduced and widely used in the field of concrete engineering. It is commonly

acknowledged that the addition of fiber into concrete matrix can enhance the tensile, flexural

and impact strengths, toughness and post-cracking ductility of concrete materials, and

consequently improve the static, seismic and fatigue performance of concrete

structures[ CITATION Bia17 \l 1033 ].

The fiber has a wide variety of usage as an industrial material. Consequently, the

types, identification and the classification of the new fibers types were an essential

requirement. Fiber is classified into two main groups natural fiber and a man-made fiber and

each one of the groups have different classes and sub-classes as indicated in Figure 2.1

[ CITATION Sab15 \l 1033 ].

With the development of synthetic fiber, synthetic macro-fiber has been used widely in civil

engineering. Due to some limitations of steel fiber, macro synthetic fiber could be a better
solution for enhanced performance, such as- facilitate light weight concrete structure, high

corrosion resistance; better residual (post-cracking) flexural strength, smaller crack width

and improved performance in impact, abrasion along with more of a leveled surface than

traditional steel fiber reinforced concrete[ CITATION MJH11 \l 1033 ]

2.3 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[ CITATION KDh16 \l 1033 ]. Fiber reinforcement today is mainly used in many

applications such as industrial beam & floors, overlays, and sprayed concrete, although

other application areas exist. Addition of short, discontinuous fibers plays an important role

in the improvement of the mechanical properties of concrete[ CITATION Pra15 \l 1033 ]. Fiber

reinforced concrete was successfully used in variety of engineering applications, because of

its satisfactory and outstanding performance in the industry and construction field. Most of

the research in the last four decades has been done on mechanical behavior of fiber

reinforced concrete and fiber to study how fibers perform so well in concrete[ CITATION NSo18

\l 1033 ].

Fiber reinforced concrete is cement- based composite material that has been

developed in recent years. It has been successfully used in construction with its excellent

flexural-tensile strength, resistance to spitting, impact resistance and excellent permeability

and frost resistance. It is an effective way to increase toughness, shock resistance and

resistance to plastic shrinkage cracking of the concrete[ CITATION Sal16 \l 1033 ]. The

mechanical behavior of fiber reinforced concrete (FRC) are affected by many factors which
include the concrete matrix (concrete strength grade, matrix composites, additional mixture

etc.), fibers (fiber type, volume fraction, length, diameter, strength, stiffness etc.), and

interfacial transition zones (ITZs). For a specified concrete matrix, fibers become the primary

factor[ CITATION Bia17 \l 1033 ].

2.5 ORDINARY PORTLAND CEMENT

The materials used for the concrete mixture consisted of the normal Type I Portland

cement, the gravel having a maximum size of 2.54 cm, and the fine sand having a fineness

modulus of 2.9. (Song et al., 2005) Ordinary Portland Cement is a hydraulic mineral binding

material. Blended with water, the pulverous cement can generate the plastic paste which will

turn into hard cement block and bind granulated materials together after a series of physical

and chemical effects. The hardening of cement paste will happen not only in the air but also

in water and also can maintain and increase its strength. Cement is one of the important

materials for the construction of national economy. Also, it is the basic component for

concrete, reinforced concrete, and prestressed concrete, commonly used in construction,

transportation, water conservancy, electric power, national defense, and other construction

projects. (Reddy et al., 1988)

2.6 AGGREGATES SIZE AND VOLUME

Coarse aggregate in the concrete which is often to be the larger size than the

average fiber spacing if the fibers are distributed uniformly. This will lead to greater

interaction of fiber between the coarse aggregate. The effect becomes more significant as

the volume and maximum size of the particles increases. Figure 2.6 demonstrates this

principle. The effect of a range of aggregate sizes and volumes on the compaction times of

composites of ratio l/d is 100. (Siti Asiah Binti Mohd. Arif, 2006)
Figure 2.6