Use of polypropylene fibers coated with nano-silica particles into a cementitious mortar

Journal Article · Thu Dec 17 00:00:00 EST 2015 · AIP Conference Proceedings

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4937334· OSTI ID:22494370

Di Maio, L.; Scarfato, P.; Incarnato, L. ^[1]

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1. Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Salerno Via Giovanni Paolo II n. 132, 84084 Fisciano (Italy)

Fiber reinforced cementitious composite (FRCC) materials have been widely used during last decades in order to overcome some of traditional cementitious materials issues: brittle behaviour, fire resistance, cover spalling, impact strength. For composite materials, fiber/matrix bond plays an important role because by increasing fiber/matrix interactions is possible to increase the behaviour of the entire material. In this study, in order to improve fiber to matrix adhesion, two chemical treatments of polypropylene fibers were investigated: alkaline hydrolysis and nano-silica sol-gel particles deposition. Treatmtents effect on fibers morphology and mechanical properties was investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and tensile tests. SEM investigations report the presence of spherical nano-silica particles on fiber surface, in the case of sol-gel process, while alkaline hydrolysis leads to an increase of fibers roughness. Both treatments have negligible influence on fibers mechanical properties confirming the possibility of their use in a cementitious mortar. Pullout tests were carried out considering three embedded length of fibers in mortar samples (10, 20 and 30 mm, respectively) showing an increase of pullout energy for treated fibers. The influence on fiber reinforced mortar mechanical properties was investigated by three-point flexural tests on prismatic specimens considering two fibers length (15 and 30 mm) and two fibers volume fractions (0.50 and 1.00 %). A general increase of flexural strength over the reference mix was achieved and an overall better behaviour is recognizable for mortars containing treated fibers.

• OSTI ID: 22494370
• Journal Information: AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 1695, Issue 1; Conference: GT70 international conference on polymer processing with resulting morphology and properties: Feet in the present and eyes at the future, Salerno (Italy), 15-17 Oct 2015; Other Information: (c) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0094-243X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
ADHESION
ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS
COMPOSITE MATERIALS
FIBERS
FIRE RESISTANCE
FLEXURAL STRENGTH
IMPACT STRENGTH
LENGTH
MORPHOLOGY
MORTARS
PARTICLES
POLYPROPYLENE
ROUGHNESS
SCANNING ELECTRON MICROSCOPY
SILICA
SOL-GEL PROCESS
SPHERICAL CONFIGURATION
SURFACES