Performance of sustainable lightweight foam concrete with synthetic micro and macro fibers as reinforcement

Abstract

In the current research, lightweight foam concrete blocks made from recycled concrete powder, reinforced with plastic macro fibers and polypropylene micro fibers have been proposed as sustainable concrete approach. By adding Recycled Concrete Powder (RCP) in the amount ranging from 15 to 30% by weight of cement, have only a mild impact on the strength properties of foam concrete. Addition of mono fibers and hybrid fibers improves the mechanical properties of foam concrete with RCP. The tensile strength, flexural strength and compressive strengths of concrete are enhanced by the addition of micro and macro fibres. As the percentage of macro fiber increases the strength of the light weight concrete also increases. when the proportion of micro fibers is more compared to macro fibers, the strength properties are slightly reducing as the micro fibers reduces the plasticity of foam mix. In hybrid fiber reinforcement 0.3% plastic and 0.2% polypropylene showed an improvement in mechanical properties compared to other specimens.

Keywords

• recycled fine aggregate light weight concrete foam concrete polypropylene fiber plastic fiber