An Experimental Approach to Investigate Effects of Curing Regimes on Mechanical Properties and Durability of Different Fibrous Mortars

Abstract

Fibre Reinforced Concrete (FRC), in the recent decades, became a very popular and attractive material in structural engineering because of its good mechanical performance. There were many research performed on concrete but very few on mortar. This paper reports an investigation on different fibrous mortar in two different curing conditions. In this investigation the performance of carbon, glass, polyester and steel fibrous mortars were studied under acidic and alkaline curing regimes. The water–cement ratio of all the mortar mixtures was kept constant. The mortar specimen containing fibre of 0.0, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.8 and 1.0 % by weight of cement were casted and tested. The specimens were subjected to acidic curing in 5 % HCl solution after 28 days of normal curing and direct alkaline curing in 3.5 % NaCl solution in water after demoulding at room temperature of 27 °C and 60 % relative humidity. The compressive strength, impact strength and shear strength were determined. The results indicate that the addition of different fibres in plain mortar results in improvement of strength of mortar. The increased compressive strength of different fibrous mortar was 18.04 % for steel fibre in acidic curing and 19.01 % for polyester fibre in alkaline curing. The increased absorb energy in impact strength of different fibrous mortar were 377.78 % for steel fibre in acidic curing and 192.87 % for carbon fibre in alkaline curing. The increased shear strength of different fibrous mortar was 14.60 % for carbon fibre in acidic curing and 49.49 % for glass fibre in alkaline curing.