Study on the effect of steel and glass fibers on fresh and hardened properties of vibrated concrete and self-compacting concrete

Abstract

The plain concrete has been replaced by fiber reinforced concrete from past years. The inclusion of fibers in the concrete decrease the brittleness and advances the mechanical properties. This paper evaluates the properties of vibrated concrete and self-compacting concrete reinforced with steel fiber and glass fiber. In this study, the self-compacting concrete and vibrated concrete were tested with varying fiber content of steel fibers (0.3, 0.6 and 0.9%) and glass fibers (0.02, 0.03 and 0.04%). For this purpose, vibrated concrete and self-compacting concrete were designed. The fresh batches of vibrated concrete were assessed for slump and the fresh batches of self-compacting concrete were assessed for slump flow, T500 and V-funnel (TV). The surface hardness and homogeneity of the concrete were inspected for all the mixes and 28 days compressive strength test, split tensile strength test and flexural strength test were carried. The experimental results indicated that the workability was highly influenced by fibers in the concrete irrespective to type of fiber. The steel fibers improved the flexural strength, split tensile strength and had slight effect on compressive values. The glass fibers increased the compressive strength effectively than steel fibers. The homogeneity was observed excellent and reduced with increased fiber volume and surface hardness increased with fibers. The properties of self-compacting concrete were highly influenced by the fibers than the properties of vibrated concrete.