Impact of chopped basalt fibres on the mechanical proper- ties of concrete

Basalt fibre is a novel inorganic fibre which is produced from basalt rock. In this study the impact of chopped basalt fibres on the concrete workability, compressive and tensile strength, and concrete’s modulus of rupture at 7 and 28-days was investigated. The concrete used in this research was normal strength concrete with a target compressive strength of 30/37 MPa. In this re-search, fibre reinforced concrete samples were produced using basalt chopped fibres of two quantities (4 kg/m3 and 8 kg/m3) and three different fibre lengths, namely 25.4-mm, 12.7-mm, and 6.4-mm. The test findings revealed that slump decreased as the quantity of fibres increased and shorter fibres were used. The mechanical properties of concrete were affected by the fibre dosage and length. Overall, the results indicated that adding chopped basalt fibres improved the compressive, tensile, and flexural strength of concrete, particularly at early age, while slightly reducing the compressive strength at 28-days by an average of 3.9%. The results indicated that adding 4 kg/m3 of 25.4-mm long chopped basalt fibre into concrete provided the best performance of concrete in compressive and tensile strength, and modulus of rupture