Analyzing Strength Parameters in Fiber-Reinforced Concrete: Compressive, Tensile & Flexural Strength Evaluation

The present day world is witnessing the construction of very challenging and difficult civil engineering structures. Quite often, concrete being the most important and widely used material is called upon to possess very high strength and sufficient workability properties. Researchers all over the world are attempting to develop high performance concretes by using fibers and other admixtures in concrete up to certain proportions. Concrete is a brittle material that has low tensile strength and low strain capacity. In fact, many deteriorations and failures in the concrete structures are due to the brittle nature of this material. These disadvantages may be avoided by adding short discontinuous fibers to plain concrete which has been a major motivation for many research works in recent years. Fibers are added into a brittle-matrix composite to help improve three major aspects, toughness, ductility and strength (tensile). Fibers tend to increase toughness of the composite material by bridging the cracks and provide energy absorption mechanism related to de-bonding and fiber pull-out. Concrete is the composition of aggregates, cement. Fiber reinforcement involves micro- reinforcement of fiber in concrete.