Effect of polyester fibres on the compressive strength and abrasion resistance of HVFA concrete

Approximately 95 million tones of fly is generated in India yearly, and most of the fly ash is of Class F type. Out of which only around 15-20% is utilized in cement production and cement/concrete related activities. Since large scale utilization of large volumes of fly ash in various concrete applications is a becoming a more general practice, an investigation was carried out to investigate the compressive strength and abrasion resistance of high volume fly ash concrete (HVFA) concrete with polyester fibres. In this paper, abrasion resistance of high volume fly ash (HVFA) concretes made with 30%, 40%, and 50% of cement replacement was evaluated in terms of its relation with compressive strength. Comparison was made between ordinary Portland cement and fly ash concrete. Test results indicated that abrasion resistance of concrete having cement replacement up to 30% was comparable to the normal concrete mixture with out fly ash. Beyond 30% cement replacement, fly ash concretes exhibited slightly lower resistance to abrasion relative to non-fly ash concretes. Inclusion of polyester fibres in HVFA concretes improved the abrasion resistance of concrete. Test results further indicated that abrasion resistance of concrete is closely related with compressive strength, and had a very good correlation between abrasion resistance and compressive strength (R-2) value between 0.9208 and 0.804 depending upon fly ash content, testing age, and percentage of polyester fibres. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.