A preliminary study - fiber reinforced cement mixes with partial replacement of waste fly ash

The recent technology is to produce an eco-friendly cementitious material using waste products, such as waste incineration fly ash. The fly ash used in the present research was retained on boilers generated by incinerators, in Lebanon. Cement based mixes were reinforced with polypropylene fibers, in addition to partially replacing cement or sand by fly ash. The experimental testing includes compression and flexural tests on 50 mm cubes and prisms. Several cement-based mixes were used in the research by varying the proportion of fly ash and the polypropylene fibers. The percentage of cement or sand was replaced by 0 to 30% fly ash. The dosage of fibers was 0 to 1.8 kg/m. The water-cement ratio was fixed to 0.5. Compressive strength and flexural strength results, presented in this paper, reveal that mortar with partial cement or sand replacement, in addition to the fibers, show promising improvement in compressive strength and an increase of around 15% was noted.