STUDY OF HIGH STRENGTH CONCRETE USING COIR FIBER BLENDED WITH SILICA FUME

Abstract

The most widely used material in building construction is Concrete. High Strength Concrete is widely used in
the construction industry worldwide nowadays. We use Mineral Admixtures like Silica Fume, Fly Ash and workable agents
like super plasticizers are also used to produce High Strength Concrete with normal ingredients. The use of supplementary
cementitious materials like Silica Fume, Fly Ash is fundamental in developing low cost construction materials. By addition of
these pozzolanic materials, various properties of concrete like workability, durability, strength resistance to cracks and
permeability can be improved and thus emissions of CO2 can be decreased. Silica Fume is known to enhance both
mechanical characteristics and durability of concrete; also acts as perfect filler due to its fineness. To delay and control the
tensile cracking of composite material coir fiber is included in concrete. An attempt is made to reuse coir fiber materials as
fiber composites in concrete which not only solve the ductility problem but also the problem of waste disposal to some extent.
Thermally, coir fiber decreases room temperature than atmospheric temperature.
In the present project, an attempt has been made to study the properties of High strength concrete using coconut fiber and
suitability of Silica Fume as a Mineral Admixture and its effects on High Strength Concrete. Concrete mixes are planned to
made using Ordinary Portland Cement alone as control and also replacing percentage of cement by 5%, 10%, 15% and 20%
of Silica Fume. 2% of Coir Fiber is added in all the concrete mixes. For all the mixes beams were casted and tested at 3
days, 7 days and 28 days for compressive strength, Split Tensile Strength and Flexural Strength respectively. Workability is
decreased due to the presence of Coir Fiber. Hence, in this study, the optimum content of Silica Fume in concrete in order to
increase its Flexural Strength was 10% and 2% fiber.