Study on the Fracture Toughness of Polypropylene–Basalt Fiber-Reinforced Concrete

Abstract

Abstract To study the hybrid effects of polypropylene fiber and basalt fiber on the fracture toughness of concrete, 13 groups of notched concrete beam specimens with different fiber contents and mass ratios were prepared for the three-point bending test. Based on acoustic emission monitoring data, the initiation cracking load and instability load of each group of specimens were obtained, and the fracture toughness parameters were calculated according to the double-K fracture criterion. The test results show that the basalt fiber-reinforced concrete has a greater increase in initial fracture toughness, and the toughness of coarse polypropylene fiber-reinforced concrete is more unstable. Moreover, after the coarse polypropylene fiber content reaches 6 kg/m3 and the basalt fiber content reaches 3 kg/m3, increasing the content will not significantly improve the fracture toughness of the concrete. The polypropylene–basalt fiber will produce positive and negative effects when mixed, and the mass ratio of 2:1 was optimal. Finally, the fitting analysis revealed that the fracture process of polypropylene–basalt fiber-reinforced concrete (PBFRC) can be objectively described by the bilinear softening constitutive curve improved by Xu and Reinhardt.

Keywords

• hybrid-fiber concrete
• three-point bending test
• fracture toughness
• fiber content
• fiber mass ratio
• bilinear softening curve