STRENGTH AND DURABILITY STUDY ON POLYESTER FIBRE REINFORCED CONCRETE WITH TERNARY SUPPLEMENTARY CEMENTITIOUS MATERIALS

Abstract

The widely used construction material concrete is generally weak in tension and strong in compression. The plain
concrete can be made strong in tension by providing reinforcement rods or fibres of sufficient quantity. Now a days the fibres
are used as a secondary reinforcement, which act as a crack arrester ,improves toughness and mechanical properties. The
effect of fibres on ternary blended concrete was less observed. The present study focused on the polyester fibre reinforced
concrete with cement replaced by fly ash and metakaolin. At first the cement is replaced by 30% fly ash and made it constant
for further mixes. After this the optimum percentage of metakaolin was found out. Metakaolin was replaced by 0 to 15% (0,
5, 10 and 15%) by weight of cementitious materials with the fixed 30% replacement of fly ash. Finally the polyester fibre was
added into the mix with estimated optimum amount of metakaolin and fixed amount of fly ash. The fibre was added in the
range 0 to 0.3% (0, 0.1, 0.15,0.2, 0.25 and 0.3%) by weight of cementitious materials. The mechanical properties such as
cube compressive strength, flexural strength, split tensile strength and modulus of elasticity was studied. From that results
the optimum percentage of fibre was decided. The study also involved the durability tests suchas: bulk diffusion test, sulphate
resistance test and carbonation test for the fibre reinforced concrete with supplementary cementitious materials. The chloride
penetration depths, sulphate resistance and carbonation depths of different mixes were obtained and analysed.