Mechanical strength of coconut fiber reinforced concrete

Abstract

Coconut fiber is a material naturally available in many parts of the world. In this study, Coconut fiber reinforced concrete specimen were cast and tested to investigate the mechanical strength. Coconut fibers of length 25, 50, and 75 mm were added at four different proportions of 0.5%, 1%, 1.5% and 2% by mass of cement. Various tests for determining its compressive strength, flexural strength, split tensile strength and shear strength, were conducted and compared with plain concrete. It was observed that coconut fiber reinforced concrete demonstrated improvement in its mechanical properties especially in shear strength, which shows 25% to 30 % improvement for both 50 mm and 75 mm long fibers.