Abstract
The possibility of using geopolymer instead of Portland cement could effectively reduce carbon dioxide emissions from cement manufacturing. Fibre-reinforced self-compacting geopolymers have great potential in civil engineering applications, such as chord member grouting for concrete-filled steel tubular truss beams. However, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the quantitative relationship between FF and the properties of the fibre-reinforced geopolymer has been rarely reported. In this research, 26 groups of mixtures were used to study the influence of the polypropylene fibre factor (FF) on the flowability and mechanical properties and also the compactness of the fibre-reinforced self-compacting geopolymer. At the same volume fraction, geopolymers with long fibres present worse flowability than those having short fibres due to the easier contacting of long fibres. By growing the FF the influence of fibre addition on the V-funnel flow rate is more significant than the slump spread. This can be ascribed to the consequence of fibre addition and friction by the V-funnel which estimates the restrained deformability. For FF lesser than critical factor Fc = 100, influence of fibres is negligible and fibres are far apart from each other and, thus, they cannot restrict cracking under load and transfer the load to improve the mechanical properties. For FF between the Fc = 100 and density factor Fd = 350, a noteworthy enhancement of mechanical properties was obtained and the geopolymer was still adequately workable to flow by weight of self, without any symbols of instability and fibre clumping. Under this condition, better fibre dispersal and reinforcing productivity can lead to better hardened properties. For FF higher than Fd = 350, fibres tend to come to be entwined together and form clumping resulting from the fibre balling, resulting in worse hardened properties. This research offers a sensible basis for the application of the workability regulator of the fresh properties of fibre-reinforced geopolymer as an operative way to basically obtain ideal mechanical properties.
Highlights
It is known to all that Portland cement is the most widely used binding material in concrete in the world
The regression study disclosed that there was a linear relationship between the volume fraction of fibre and the flowability of the geopolymer, shown as Equations (6)–(9)
The correlation coefficients between the two were very high, both above 0.8. It was similar with the results reported in literatures about PP fibre-reinforced Portland cementitious composites [28]
Summary
It is known to all that Portland cement is the most widely used binding material in concrete in the world. One t-carbon dioxide is emitted for every ton of Portland cement manufactured, so it is significant to find green cementing materials [1]. The possibility of using geopolymer instead of Portland cement could effectively reduce carbon dioxide emissions from cement manufacturing [2,3]. As Portland cement-based composites, geopolymers display brittle failure resulting from their low tensile strength that could enforce some restrictions in potential engineering application. Portland cement-based composites are reinforced by the inclusion of fibres manufacturing concrete with a toughness performance [6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13]. Different kinds of fibres have been used to reinforce geopolymers [14,15,16,17,18]
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