The Influence of Concrete Strength on the Effect of Synthetic Fibres on Fire Resistance

Abstract

Numerous studies have verified that increased concrete strength reduces its resistance to fire, leads to a higher degree of strength reduction and higher chances of spalling of concrete surfaces.The risks of spalling of concrete surfaces can be reduced by adding synthetic polypropylene fibres. Numerous experiments have shown that the risk of spalling of the concrete surface is significantly lower when using short, small diameter fibres of polypropylene synthetic, because the pore structure created by the burning of fibres reduces the risk of cracking.However, the question arises whether other types of fibres of greater diameter and length are still able to prevent spalling of concrete surfaces without drastically reducing the strength and if so, in what range of concrete strength it is true.The experiments are aimed to determine the effects of micro and macro synthetic fibres on the post-fire residual compressive strength, flexural strength and porosity of concrete.Nine kinds of mixture were prepared and tested. Three of them are without fibers (reference concretes) with diverse strength, three with synthetic micro-fibres with diverse strength and three with synthetic macro-fibres of diverse strength. The experiment was conducted with three concretes with different strength. Each type had a reference concrete without fibre reinforcement, one with micro- and one with macro-fibres.