Imperial Journal of Modern Technology in Civil Engineering (Formerly Journal of Geotechnics and Engineering Structures (JGES))

Mechanical Properties of Banana Fiber Concrete

• Open Access
• Shankar H. Sanni,Shashikanth A. Kambali2,
• Imperial Journal of Modern Technology in Civil Engineering (Formerly Journal of Geotechnics and Engineering Structures (JGES)),,Volume 7 ,Issue No 1 (January-March 2020),

Even though the market for fiber reinforced concrete is still small compared to the overall production of concrete, the worldwide yearly consumption of fibers used in concrete is 300,000 tons. Fibers can be in form of coconut fiber, banana fiber, steel fiber, glass fiber, natural fiber, synthetic fiber, etc. The fibers are used to reduce shrinkage cracking. Main role of fibers is to bridge the cracks that develop in concrete and increase the ductility of concrete elements, improvement on post cracking behaviour of concrete. It increase more resistance to Impact load, controls plastic shrinkage cracking and drying shrinkage

cracking and lowers the permeability of concrete matrix and thus reduce the bleeding of water. The fiber enhances the toughness property of concrete, hence an attempt is made in the present investigation to use banana fibers in concrete.

Keywords:banana fiber, compressive strength, split tensile strength, flexural strength The grade chosen for the investigation was M-25. The mechanical properties of banana fiber based concrete were studied by replacing the same at 0.5%, 1%, 1.5% and 2% % by the weight of cement. The

test specimens chosen for the study was 150x150x150 mm cubes, 100x200 mm cylinders and 100x100x500mm beams. Results indicate Banana fiber, a ligno-cellulosic fiber, obtained from the pseudo-stem of banana plant (Musa supientum), is a best fiber with relatively good mechanical properties. Compressive, split tensile and flexural strength were maximum at 0.5% addition of banana fibers.