Special Topic Presentation on

“Prediction and Estimation of Some of the

Properties of Fibre Reinforced Concrete:
Some Studies with Modern Tools”

by
Ms. Nilam Adsul
M.E – (CEM)
 Introduction
• The present day world is witnessing the construction of very challenging
and difficult civil engineering structures. Concrete being the most
important and widely used material is called up onto possess very high
strength and sufficient workability properties.

• Concrete is a composite construction material made primarily with

aggregate, cement, and water, admixture.

• Concrete is widely used for making architectural structures, foundations,

brick/block walls, pavements, bridges/overpasses, motorways/roads,
runways, parking structures, dams, pools/reservoirs, pipes, footings for
gates, fences and poles and even boats, etc.

• Concrete is generally good future and is unlikely to get replaced by any

other material on account of its ease to produce, infinite variability,
uniformity, durability and economy.
 Fibre Reinforced Concrete
• Fibre-reinforced concrete (FRC) is concrete containing fibrous material
which increases its structural integrity.

• It contains short discrete Fibres that are uniformly distributed and randomly
oriented.

• In addition, the character of Fibre-reinforced concrete changes with varying

concretes, Fibre materials, geometries, distribution, orientation, and
densities.

• It increases the tensile strength of the concrete.

• It reduces the air voids and water voids.

• It increases the durability of the concrete.

 Literature Review
Author Name of the topic year Summary
Ahmet Predicting the 2006 • Author showed possible applicability of
Oztas, compressive neural networks (NN) to predict the
Murat strength and slump compressive strength and slump of HSC
Pala of high strength by using MATLAB.
concrete using • In this 187 concrete mix data used & in
neural network which seven input parameters were
considered.
• From result it is observed that, NN is an
feasible tool for predicting
Özgür Effects of Silica Fume 2010 • In this the influence of silica fume on the
Eren, and Steel Fibres on properties of HSFRC were investigated by
Khaled Some Mechanical using silica fume at two different
Marar Properties of High- percentages and with three different
Strength Fibre- hooked-end fibres.
Reinforced Concrete • fibres in high-strength concrete improves
impact resistance, surface abrasion, and
splitting tensile strength
 Literature review (Cont..)
A Torre, F Prediction of 2015 • In this paper, artificial neural networks had
Garcia compression strength proven to be a powerful modelling tool
of high performance especially when obtaining a result with
concrete using higher reliability.
artificial neural
networks

Ammu Experimental 2015 • In this paper, steel fibre were added at

Baby, Studies on Effect of percentages of 0.1, 0.25 and 0.5 and
Divya Alccofine in Alccofine were added at the rate of 5,
Sasi Workability and 10, and 15 % by weight of cement.
Mechanical • Experimental result shows that
Properties of Steel Alccofine performs as a better
Fibre Reinforced workability agent as well as improves
Concrete the strength of concrete
 Literature review (Cont..)
G. Venkatesan, Experimental 2016 • The aim of this paper is to
R. Regupathi Studies on High acquire knowledge for
Performance designing low cost but safe
Concrete Using buildings using natural fibre .
Natural Fibre (Coir
Fibre)

T.V.S. Vara A Study on Preparing 2016 • physical properties of HPC using

Lakshmi Of High Performance silica fume and fly ash as
Concrete Using Silica mineral admixtures along with
Fume and Fly Ash the addition of glass fibres
• mix containing 10% silica fume,
10% fly ash and 0.3 % glass
fibres experienced higher
mechanical properties
compared to that of the normal
specimen.
 Types of Fibres
Natural fibres
• Natural fibres come from natural
sources like plants and animals.
Steel fibres
• Different sizes and shapes like
Straight, crimped, twisted,
hooked, ringed, and paddled ends
• 18 to 60 mm long
• Diameter range from 0.25 to
0.76mm
• Tensile strength of between 600–
2500 Mpa
 Types of Fibres (Cont..)

Glass Fibre Carbon Fibre

• Glass fibre is available in the
market in many forms
• its Diameter ranges from 0.005 to
0.015mm.
• Very light with a specific gravity
of about 1.9.
• Available in stands (tows)
• elastic modulus as high as steel
and is two to three times stronger
than steel.
 Types of Fibres (Cont..)
Synthetic Fibre
• The common forms of these fibres are smooth mono- filament, twisted,
fibrillated and tri-dimensional mat.

• Reduce early plastic shrinkage cracking and increase impact and abrasion
resistance and toughness.
• Low density
 Materials

1. Cement 3. Fine aggregate

• Ordinary Portland cement 53 • IS-383-1970
grade: IS-12269-2009 & 2013 • Specific gravity-2.72-2.97
• Ordinary Portland cement 53 • Passing through sieve IS 4.75mm
grade: IS-8112-1989

2. Fly Ash 4. Coarse aggregate

• IS-3812: (Part-I)-2013 • IS-383-1970

• Specific gravity 2.1 -3.0 • Specific gravity-2.92-3.0
• Nominal size 20mm
 Materials (Cont.…)

5. Natural Fibre (Coir Fibre) 7. Steel Fibre

• Coir or coconut fibre • Hooked end steel fibre of 1mm
diameter and 50 mm length,

6. Glass Fibre 8. Polypropylene Fibre

• Length 12mm & diameter • Monofilament polypropylene
14micron. fibres in the different proportion
• The specific gravity is 2.68. by weight of cement used.
• Additions of Glass fibre in the Fibre type Length (mm) Diameter (mm)
different proportion by weight
of cement. Monofilament 30-50 0.30-0.35

Microfilament 12-20 0.05-0.20

 Materials (Cont.…)

9. Silica Fume 10. Alccofine

• ASTM C1240-05 • Alccofine 1101-S
• Alccofine 1203-A

11. Super-plasticizer 12. Water

 Tests on fresh concrete

Slump Cone test

• Measures consistency of concrete
• Indicate degree of wetness
 Curing

• Curing is an important process to prevent the concrete specimens from

losing their moisture while they were gaining their required strength.
• concrete specimens cured in potable water at room temperature for several
days as required.
 Tests on Hardened Concrete

Compressive Strength Flexural Strength

• Capacity of a material or structure to
withstand loads tending to reduce size
 Modern Tools
Soft computing technique:
• Lotfi A. Zadeh: the inventor of the term soft computing, describes it as
follows: “Soft computing is a collection of methodologies that aim to
exploit the tolerance for imprecision and uncertainty to achieve tractability,
robustness, and low solution cost.

• The role model for soft computing is the human mind.

• It resemble human reasoning more closely than traditional techniques.

• strong learning, cognitive ability and good tolerance of uncertainty and

imprecision
Components of soft computing include:
• Machine learning, including:
– Neural networks (NN)
• Perceptron
– Support Vector Machines (SVM)
• Fuzzy logic (FL)
• Evolutionary computation (EC), including:
– Evolutionary algorithms
• Genetic algorithms
• Differential evolution
– Meta-heuristic and Swarm Intelligence
• Ant colony optimization
• Particle swarm optimization
• Ideas about probability including:
– Bayesian network
• Chaos theory
 Artificial Neural Networks
• centered on the natural behaviour
of human nervous system.
• consist of input, output layer of
neurons, and one or more hidden
layer of neurons.
• All the layers are totally interlinked
by various weights.
• ANNs generally include the
following components:
(1) a set of processing neurons,
(2) a state of activation for each neuron,
(3) a pattern of connectivity among the
neurons,
(4) a propagation method,
(5) an activation rule,
(6) an external environment, and
(7) a learning method.
 Fuzzy logic
• Fuzzy sets were first introduced
by Lotfi Zadeh in 1965 to deal
with uncertainty and imprecision.
• This is unlike set theory, which
deals with only two possibilities,
i.e., 0 (non-membership) or 1
(full-membership)
• Ability to represent complex
relations, and capability to deal
with both subjective and objective
variables.
• useful to construct models of
complex systems using domain
knowledge, experience, and
experimental data.
 Case Studies
1. Uri Dam, Jammu & Kashmir
Project Start Date: 21 September 2005
Project Finish Date: March 2011
Project Details:
• project includes the construction of a
concrete gravity dam, diversion tunnel,
head race tunnel, surge shaft, pressure
shaft, power house complex and tail
race tunnel.

• total catchment area =13,400 km2. • An underground power house 133 m

in length, 15 m in width and 40 m in
• The concrete gravity dam is 52 m in height will accommodate four
height and 157 m in length. turbines of 60 MW capacities each.

• There are four spillways of nine metres
each in the dam which will help divert
the water to the tunnel for power
generation.
Concrete Used: Project successfully
completed the dam structure with a total
Steel Fibre Reinforced concrete quantity
of 1.00 lakh cubic metre during March
2011
 Case Studies (Cont..)
2. Bombay-Pune Expressway
Project details:
• The Mumbai Pune Expressway,
(officially known as the Yashwantrao
Chavan Mumbai Pune Expressway).
• India's first six-lane concrete, high-
speed, access controlled tolled
expressway.
• It spans a distance of 94.5 km
• Reduction in accidents.
• Speedy completion of work.
• Savings in travel time.
• Economic development through speedy
traffic.
• Reduction in pollution

Concrete Details:
Steel fibre reinforced concrete is used in
large quantity.
• Total cement used= 7.17 lakh M.T.
• Total steel fibres used= 28200 M.T.
 Conclusions
Following are the conclusions derived from the literature survey:
• NNs have strong potential as a feasible tool for predicting compressive
strength and slump value.
• The addition of silica fume enhanced the compressive strength significantly
up to 30%.
• It can be inferred that optimum value of cement replacement with
Alccofine lies in the range of 10% - 15%
• Alccofine behaves as a good admixture in strength improvement as well as
in workability
• Addition of silica fume improves bond strength of concrete
• considerable increase in the splitting and flexural tensile strengths of the
concretes was obtained by using silica fume and steel fibres together
 References
• A Torre, F Garcia, I Moromi, P Espinoza, L Acuña,” Prediction of compression strength
of high performance concrete using artificial neural networks”, International Congress of
Engineering Physics. Journal of Physics: Conference Series 582, 2015, pp.2010-2015

• A. H. Boussabaine, “The use of neural networks in construction management: A review,”

Construction Management and Economics, vol. 14, no. 5, 1996, pp. 427-436.

• Ahmet O¨ ztas, Murat Pala, Erdogˇan O¨ zbay , Erdogˇan Kanca, Naci C¸ agˇlar c, M.
Asghar Bhatt,” Predicting the compressive strength and slump of high strength concrete
using neural network”, construction and building materials, 20, 2006 pp.769–775.

• Ammu Baby, Divya Sasi,“Experimental Studies on Effect of Alccofine in Workability

and Mechanical Properties of Steel Fibre Reinforced Concrete”, IJEDR, 2015,Volume 3,
Issue 4.

• C. F. Fang And T. Froese, “Cost Estimation Of High Performance Concrete (HPC)

Highrise Commercial Buildings By Neural Networks”, Durability of Building material
& components, 8., 1999, pp. 2476-2486.

• Dr. T.V.S. Vara Lakshmi, Prof. S. Adiseshu, “A Study on Preparing Of High Performance
Concrete Using Silica Fume and Fly Ash”, The International Journal Of Engineering
And Science (IJES),2016, Volume 5 ,Issue 2 ,PP -29-35.
• Özgür Eren, Khaled Marar, and Tahir Çelik, “Effects of Silica Fume and Steel Fibres on
Some Mechanical Properties of High-Strength Fibre-Reinforced Concrete”, Journal of
Testing and Evaluation, JTEVA, Vol. 27, No. 6, November 1999, pp. 380–387.
• W. Pedrycz and F. Gomide, Fuzzy System Engineering Toward Human-Centric
Computing, 1st ed., Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2007
• G. Venkatesan, R. Regupathi, V. Padmashri,T. Neelambari and D. Manisha, “Experimental
Studies on High Performance Concrete Using Natural Fibre (Coir Fibre), 2 Middle-East J.
Sci. Res., 24 (Recent Innovations in Engineering, Technology, Management &
Applications), 2016, pp. 148-151.

Website References:
• www.google.co.in/m?=silica+fume
• www.google.co.in/m?=glass+fibre
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumbai_Pune_Expressway
• "Mumbai-Pune Expressway, India". Road Traffic Technology. Retrieved 2010-08-21
Thank you