STRENGTH ENHANCEMENT OF REINFORCED CONCRETE FLANGED BEAMS BY POLYPROPYLENE FIBRES

Reinforced Concrete has the excellent endurance to compression while steel has more stability in tension. Traditional concrete has inadequate ductility, low impact and abrasion resistance and little resistance to cracking. A reliable concrete must hold high strength and low permeability. Hence, alternative Composite materials are augmenting popularity because of ductility and strain hardening and also promote the post cracking behavior, short irregular, and discrete fibers are appended to the plain concrete. The addition of fibers advances the post peak ductility achievement, pre-crack tensile strength, fracture strength, toughness, impact resistance, flexural Strength resistance, fatigue performance etc. The ductility of fiber reinforced concrete depends on the ability of the fibers to bridge cracks at high levels of strain. An addition of polypropylene fibers decreases the unit weight of concrete and increases its strength. Concrete produces micro cracks under curing stages and these cracks propagate quickly under employed stress occurring in the low tensile strength of concrete. Consequently, The mixing of fibers gains the strength of concrete and these difficulties can be overwhelmed by use of Polypropylene fibers in concrete. Utilization of polypropylene fibers contributes strength to the concrete. The primary role of fibers in a cementations composite is to control cracks, increase the tensile strength, toughness and to improve the deformation characteristics of the composite. Numerous researchers have revealed practical illustrations numerical models for the evaluation of strengths of PPFRC, only for the particular proportion. The models developed by various researchers so far have their own limitations in practice, and hence could not be applied for all types of specimen parameters in the wide range. To the researcher's knowledge, literature available is rather infrequent on the performance of PPFRC composite components. Therefore, There is an urgent need to focus on the mechanical properties, mathematical modeling of strength, durability characteristics, and structural behavior of PPFRC.