Effects of sus scrofa domestica's hair to the properties of fresh and hardened concrete

• Main Authors: Templonueo, Julinel C., Young, Channel James E., Zotomayor, Rafael Louis D.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2013
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/11908
• Institution: De La Salle University

Concrete is widely used in the construction industry because of its durability and resistance to compressive stress. However, it remains weak when it comes to tensile stress. Therefore, reinforcements such as rebars and glass, steel, synthetic or natural fibers have to be used in order to maximize the strength concrete can offer. However, these reinforcements proved to be expensive. Therefore, the researchers tried to find a cheaper alternative. Specifically, the researchers explored the possibility of using pig-hair fibers, a natural fiber, as reinforcement for concrete, because generally, natural products tend to be cheaper than manufactured products. With these stated, this study aimed to find the effects of pig-hair fibers to the properties of fresh and hardened concrete specifically its effect to the slump, workability, air content, and finish ability for the fresh state of concrete and its effect to the compressive and tensile strengths for the hardened state of concrete. The researchers conducted two phases in their experiment. For the first phase, the researchers determined the most efficient range of the fiber content, length of fiber, and method of mixing, which would increase the tensile and the compressive strengths of fiber-reinforced concrete with reference to the control specimens. On the other hand, using the governing parameters in the first phase, the researchers determined the fiber content (within the range of the governing fiber content in the first phase), which generated the highest increase in compressive and tensile strengths of fiber-reinforced concrete as compared to conventional concrete (control specimens). Moreover, the researchers used T-test: Two-Sample Assuming Unequal Variances to check the significance of the results with respect to the control specimens. Based on the results of the air content and slump tests from the first phase of the experiment, the addition of pig-hair fibers made the fresh concrete mix less workable. Furthermore, they noticed that as the fiber content increases, the lump decreases while the air content increases. Also, results indicated that dry mixing, unsorted length of fiber, and less than 1% fiber content by volume of concrete made the greatest improvement on the hardened properties of concrete. In this study, the compressive and tensile test showed that 0.80% fiber content generated the highest compressive and tensile strengths of 15.27 MPa and 1.69 MPa with a percent increase of 35.49% and 10.46% respectively with reference to the control specimens.