Due to a growing interest in basalt fibers as a reinforcing material for concrete, it becomes necessary to study behavior of such fibers and their interaction with the concrete matrix. Basalt fibers have prospective mechanical and processability properties, as well as good cost-effectiveness when used as concrete reinforcement. However, alkali resistance properties of basalt fiber are rather weak. Three types of basalt fibers from various manufacturers are presented, which were produced from different basalt raw materials and with distinct production technologies. All presented basalt fiber types were studied before mixing with concrete and after it has cured. Size and morphology, young's modulus, tensile strength, bending modulus and flexural properties as well as chemical analysis tests were carried out on the types of basalt fibers under consideration. One type of basalt fibers showed better alkali resistance properties due to the special selection of raw materials for the basalt fibers production.

Cosmic rays interacting with the atmosphere result in a flux of secondary particles including muons and electrons. Atmospheric ray tomography (ART) uses the muons and electrons for detecting objects and their composition. This paper presents new methods and a proof-of-concept tomography system developed for the ART of low-Z materials. We introduce the Particle Track Filtering (PTF) and Multi-Modality Tomographic Reconstruction (MMTR) methods. Based on Geant4 models we optimized the tomography system, the parameters of PTF and MMTR. Based on plastic scintillating fiber arrays we achieved the spatial resolution 120 µm and 1 mrad angular resolution in the track reconstruction. We developed a novel edge detection method to separate the logical volumes of scanned object. We show its effectiveness on single (e.g. water, aluminum) and double material (e.g. explosive RDX in flesh) objects. The tabletop tomograph we built showed excellent agreement between simulations and measurements. We are able to increase the discriminating power of ART on low-Z materials significantly. This work opens up new routes for the commercialization of ART tomography.