Mechanical and structural properties of waste rope fibers-based concrete: An experimental study

Concrete is a brittle material, so it is reinforced with fibers (such as steel, glass and nylon fibers) to improve its ductility. On the other hand, the use of fibers resulting from waste is an interesting issue to avoid the negative impact of these wastes on the environment as well as converting them from useless to other valuable materials. Limited studies addressed the mechanical and structural performance of the locally produced waste rope fibers (WRF) and their reuse in concrete. As a result, the goal of this research is to see how different percentages of WRF (0%, 0.25%, 0.5% and 1% by weight of concrete) affect the workability, mechanical (such as compressive and flexural strength, ultrasonic pulse velocity and bulk density) and structural (such as load deflection, crack width and propagation, and ductility index) properties of concrete. Results indicated that WRF improved the compressive and flexural strength of concrete by up to 22% and 4.3%, respectively. Furthermore, the width of cracks of reinforced concrete beams was considerably reduced and the ductility index of WRF-based beams was 3.07-3.24 compared to 1.45 for fiber-free beams.