Structural Behavior of Kenaf Fibre Reinforced Concrete Beams

Abstract

This paper presents the effect of kenaf fibres in reinforced concrete beams. In investigating the structural behaviour of the beams, four point bending test was conducted on five beams by considering two distinct parameters (i) shear reinforcement arrangement (ii) the amount of kenaf fibres in the aforementioned beams. The beams consists of Two beams with full shear reinforcement by two amount of kenaf fibres, 10kg/m³ and 20kg/m³, respectively and two other beams with 50% increased shear spacing with two different amount of kenaf fibre 10 kg/m³ and 20 kg/m³ were examined. A control beam is made of 0 kg/m³ kenaf fibre with full shear reinforcement. The experimental results suggests that beams with the inclusion of kenaf fibres demonstrates significant increase on the load carrying capacity, ductility and shear strength. Moreover, it was observed that the mode of failure is altered from shear mode to bending mode. Furthermore, this study opines that kenaf fibres are compatible with RC which yields promising results.