Short fiber-reinforced cementitious extruded plates with high percentage of slag and different fibers

In this paper, the reinforcing effect of two kinds of short fibers, glass fibers and PVA fibers, on the tensile strength and impact resistance of extruded plates is experimentally studied. The results show that the strong but less ductile glass fibers can largely increase the tensile strength, impact strength and impact stiffness of the plates while the ductile PVA fibers are more efficient in increasing the toughness of the plates. By mixing the use of these two fibers, the products can achieve a better mechanical behavior. The effects of high percentage of ground blast-furnace slag in the mixtures were also investigated. An optimum mixing ratio of this mineral admixture was proposed based on the experimental investigations. After the experiments, a back-propagation neural network methodology is used to evaluate the static and dynamic properties of these extruded plates. The well-trained neural network can provide reasonable predictions for the properties of such kinds of materials.