Ultimate Moment Capacity of Polypropylene Fibers Reinforced Concrete Beams

S. Arivalagan

Abstract

The flexural behavior of polypropylene fiber reinforced concrete, plain concrete beams with and withoutreinforcement was investigated. The reinforcement, volume ratio of polypropylene fiber and surface type ofpolypropylene fiber kept constant for all the beams. All beams had the same dimensions and tested under twopoint loads. The results showed that polypropylene fibers were effective in reducing the crack width and crackpropagation. The results also showed that while polypropylene fibers had only slight effect on the beamstiffness, combining polypropylene fibers, and reinforcement improved the behavior of reinforced concretebeams and changed its failure mode. Also from the results it was observed that introduction of polypropylenefiber significantly improves the cracking behavior. However, only marginal improvement was observed in thecase of ultimate load.Keywords: Polypropylene fibers, reinforced concrete beams, plain concrete beams, flexural strength, crack