FOAMED CONCRETE DURABILITY PROPERTIES REINFORCED WITH AGAVE CANTALA-BASED FIBRE

The construction industry across the world recognizes the need for green, lightweight, and self-compacting materials that are also ecologically benign. Considering this requirement, a recent discovery has indicated that a novel form of concrete, known as foamed concrete (FC), has the potential to reduce structural self-weight. Natural fibres are an excellent option to be added in FC for durability properties improvement and are viewed as a great way to contribute to sustainability. The purpose of this study is to examine the possible utilization of agave cantala-based fibre (AF) in the fabrication of foamed concrete (FC) with the objective of enhancing their durability properties. Low densities FC are prone to serious durability performance degradation hence in this experiment FC of low density of 650 kg/m3 was fabricated and evaluated. Varying weight fractions of AF between 0% to 5% were considered as an additive in FC. The durability parameters that were evaluated included apparent porosity, shrinkage, water absorption and UPV. The experimental findings indicate that incorporating a weight fraction of 3% of AF in FC resulted in the optimal durability characteristics across all the durability measures examined in this study. The inclusion of AF in the combination resulted in a significant decrease in the permeability porosity and water absorption of FC. The presence of FC-AF composites with 4% fibre led to the highest drying shrinkage and UPV value and it performed better than the remaining mixtures.