Basalt‐polypropylene fiber reinforced concrete for durable and sustainable pipe production. Part 1: Experimental program

Abstract

An experimental program consisting in producing and testing reinforced concrete pipes (RCPs) under the three‐edge bearing tests considering different types of reinforcement was carried out. Four types of RCPs were produced, these reinforced with: (1) polypropylene macrofibers; (2) basalt microfibers; (3) combination of both (hybrid reinforcement); and (4) plain concrete. The analysis of the crack patterns and both service and ultimate mechanical responses allowed concluding that the use of fibers do not lead to an effective increase of the first cracking load; however, both types of fibers allowed a better crack width control respect to the standard RCP. In this regard, basalt microfiber reinforced concrete led to a better response caused by concentrated loads (jacketing) whilst polypropylene macrofibers increased the concrete pipe performance in terms of bearing capacity and flexural crack control. The hybrid fiber reinforced concrete was found to be the most suitable alternative for increasing the load bearing capacity and the crack width control for service loads. These incipient experimental results permit to conclude that this type of hybrid basalt‐polypropylene fiber reinforced concretes are an interesting alternative to traditional steel‐cage RCPs.

Basalt‐polypropylene fiber reinforced concrete for durable and sustainable pipe production. Part 2: Numerical and parametric analysis

“…49 The experimental and numerical DL-w relationships (crown section) are presented and compared in Figure 13 for the pipes tested. 42 Based on the results presented in Figure 13, it can be stated that the numerical relationships are in good agreement with those obtained experimentally. Additionally, the magnitudes of the D 0.3 and the respective relative error are depicted in Figure 14.…”

“…Beyond this point, the load level was controlled by displacement to measure continuously post‐failure response of the pipe. More details can be seen in Part I 42 …”

“…More details can be seen in Part I. 42 Regarding to the ultimate (peak) load (D u ), Figure 11 presents the comparison between the numerical and experimental values of D u for the tested pipes as well as the relative error computed.…”

“…Based on the abovementioned, the objective of this paper is twofold: (1) to implement and validate by using the experimental results presented in the Part 1 42 a non‐linear 3D‐FEM capable of simulating the structural response up to failure of concrete pipes reinforced with any configuration of steel‐cage and combination of fibers subjected to the TEBT and (2) to generate design‐oriented tables involving the minimum steel‐cage reinforcement ratios of hybrid BF and PPF fiber and steel‐cage reinforced concrete pipes (HF/RCP) with different inner diameters, wall thickness and strength grades are suggested based on the numerical model results.…”

Flexural Performance of a New Hybrid Basalt-Polypropylene Fiber-Reinforced Concrete Oriented to Concrete Pipelines

“…As shown in Table 4, fiber contents ranged between 0 and 6 kg/m 3 . Amount of 4 kg/m 3 of PPFs was considered the lower bound to provide ductility of the composite respect the unreinforced concrete [48,49] whilst 6 kg/m 3 was fixed as an upper bound since higher amounts may compromise the workability and the finishing [50][51][52][53][54]. The select of ratio between fiber content of BF and PPF referred to the previous research results [47,53,54].…”