Kenaf Fibre Reinforced Cementitious Composites

Al-Ghazali Noor Abbas,Farah Nora Aznieta Abdul Aziz,Noor Azline Mohd Nasir,Khalina Abdan,Mohd Nurazzi Norizan

doi:10.3390/fib10010003

Al-Ghazali Noor Abbas, Farah Nora Aznieta Abdul Aziz + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/fib10010003

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Abstract

Increased environmental awareness and the demand for sustainable materials have promoted the use of more renewable and eco-friendly resources like natural fibre as reinforcement in the building industry. Among various types of natural fibres, kenaf has been widely planted in the past few years, however, it hasn’t been extensively used as a construction material. Kenaf bast fibre is a high tensile strength fibre, lightweight and cost-effective, offering a potential alternative for reinforcement in construction applications. To encourage its use, it’s essential to understand how kenaf fibre’s properties affect the performance of cement-based composites. Hence, the effects of KF on the properties of cementitious composites in the fresh and hardened states have been discussed. The current state-of-art of Kenaf Fibre Reinforced Cement Composite (KFRCC) and its different applications are presented for the reader to explore. This review confirmed the improvement of tensile and flexural strengths of cementitious composites with the inclusion of the appropriate content and length of kenaf fibres. However, more studies are necessary to understand the overall impact of kenaf fibres on the compressive strength and durability properties of cementitious composites.

Highlights

The sustainability target is to keep lives on our planet for the foreseeable future by adequate care and support of the current activities without damaging the ecological balance
The findings showed that Kenaf Fibre Reinforced Cement Composite (KFRCC) samples have higher compressive strength than the composites containing polypropylene fibres
The results showed that the KFRCC containing treated fibres exhibited the least water absorption, lowest initial surface absorption, and least drying shrinkage deformation compared to the KFRCC of untreated Kenaf Fibres (KF) or the plain cementitious matrix

Summary

Introduction

The sustainability target is to keep lives on our planet for the foreseeable future by adequate care and support of the current activities without damaging the ecological balance. Sustainable development must take care of these factors wisely to maintain biodiversity and equilibrium in the ecosystem [1]. High-performance and durable construction materials are becoming the main interest of sustainable buildings all around the world [2]. Are the most widely utilized building materials for a variety of infrastructure projects around the world, which require high ductility and energy absorption capacity for a variety of applications such as bridge decks, highway pavement and industrial building floors. Cementitious composites have low tensile strength, poor ductility, low cracking resistance and little energy absorption [3]. Internal micro-cracks are inherently existent in the cementitious composite, and its low tensile strength is owing to their propagation, possibly resulting in a brittle failure of the composite. Improving the toughness of the cementitious composites and reducing the size and probability of weaknesses will result in a better performance

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