Sugar beet fiber and Tragacanth gum effects on concrete

As natural concrete supplements, waste materials obtained from food industry plants can substitute synthetic supplements in concrete to help protect the environment. This is an experimental study for examining the effects of Tragacanth gum and sugar beet fiber additives on concrete behavior. Tragacanth gum and sugar beet fiber have numerous applications in industry. Concrete specimens were prepared at six different mixing ratios of additives and subsequently tested. Tensile and compressive strengths, modulus of elasticity, slump, air voids volume and failure modes of the concrete specimens were measured to determine the changes the concrete had undergone due to the addition of sugar beet fiber and Tragacanth gum. Compressive strengths of the samples were between 32 and 37 MPa while the obtained tensile strength is between 3.43 and 3.66 MPa. The results indicated that concrete slump in the specimens exhibited considerable flowability, as in the case of self-compacting concrete. Moreover, increasing the test parameters decreased compressive strength and increased the number of air voids in the concrete. Adding a combination of Tragacanth gum and sugar beet fiber increased air voids and flowability in the concrete. Finally, given the increased concrete slump and concrete setting time, a numerical model was presented using the obtained laboratory results for examining slump variations after mixing the concrete. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.