Use of Waste and Low Energy Materials in Construction: Coconut Fibre Enhanced Concrete

Considerable work has been done on the mechanical properties of coconut- fibre enhanced concrete. The primary test variables were the fibres weight fraction, and fibres aspect ratio. The addition of coconut-fibres significantly improved many of the engineering properties of concrete, notably torsion, toughness and tensile strength. The ability to resist cracking and spalling were also enhanced. However, the addition of fibres did not improve the compressive strength, as expected, due to difficulties in compaction which consequently lead in increase of voids. When coconut fibre was added to plain concrete, the torsional strength increased (by up to about 25%) as well as the energy-absorbing capacity, but there is an optimum weight fraction (0.5% by weight of cement) beyond which the torsional strength started to decrease again. Similar results were also obtained for different fibre aspect ratios, where again results showed there was an optimum aspect ratio (125). An increase in fibre weight fraction provided a consistent increase in ductility up to the optimum content (0.5%) with corresponding fibre aspect ratio of 125.