Abstract
In this study, a sustainable mortar mixture is developed using renewable by-products for the enhancement of mechanical properties and fracture behavior. A high-volume of fly ash—a by-product of coal combustion—is used to replace Portland cement while waste by-products from the production of engineered bamboo composite materials are used to obtain bamboo fibers and to improve the fracture toughness of the mixture. The bamboo process waste was ground and size-fractioned by sieving. Several mixes containing different amounts of fibers were prepared for mechanical and fracture toughness assessment, evaluated via bending tests. The addition of bamboo fibers showed insignificant losses of strength, resulting in mixtures with compressive strengths of 55 MPa and above. The bamboo fibers were able to control crack propagation and showed improved crack-bridging effects with higher fiber volumes, resulting in a strain-softening behavior and mixture with higher toughness. The results of this study show that the developed bamboo fiber-reinforced mortar mixture is a promising sustainable and affordable construction material with enhanced mechanical properties and fracture toughness with the potential to be used in different structural applications, especially in developing countries.
Highlights
The construction industry is a major consumer of energy and raw materials and contributes immensely to environmental pollution, especially to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions [1]
Higher fiber contents resulted in lower compressive strengths. This behavior can be attributed to the difference in the compressive strength and E-modulus of the bamboo fibers and the cement matrix
The incorporated bamboo fibers reduce the overall strength of the matrix resulting in a higher loss of strength with increasing fiber content which is in compliance with the findings of other researchers [20,54,55]
Summary
The construction industry is a major consumer of energy and raw materials and contributes immensely to environmental pollution, especially to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions [1]. Concrete is the dominant building material with a global production of 20 × 1012 kg per annum which exceeds the amount of all other construction materials combined. With an increase in the demand for new infrastructure demonstrated by developing countries, the use of Portland cement (PC), the main component in concrete, has been rising rapidly [3]. The production of PC accounts for ~5% of the global anthropogenic CO2 emissions [4]. Concrete is commonly reinforced with steel, whose production involves high energy emissions and consumption of fossil fuels that contributes to CO2 emissions.
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