Modeling the polypropylene fiber effect on compressive strength of self-compacting concrete

Abstract

Although the self-compacting concrete (SCC) offers several practical and economic benefits and quality improvement in concrete constructions, in comparison with conventionally vibrated concretes confronts with autogenously chemical and drying shrinkage which causes the formation of different cracks and creates different problems in concrete structures. Using different fibers in the mix design and implementation of fibrous concrete, the problem can be solved by connecting cracks and micro cracks together and postponing the propagation of them. In this study an experimental investigation using response surface methodology (RSM) based on full factorial design has been undertaken in order to model and evaluate the polypropylene fiber effect on the fibrous self-compacting concrete and curing time, fiber percentage and fiber amount have been considered as input variables. Compressive strength has been measured and calculated as the output response to achieve a mathematical relationship between input variables. To evaluate the proposed model analysis of variance at a confidence level of 95% has been applied and finally optimum compressive strength predicted. After analyzing the data, it was found that the presented mathematical model is in very good agreement with experimental results. The overall results of the experiments confirm the validity of the proposed model and this model can be used to predict the compressive strength of fibrous self-compacting concrete.