Appraisal of Failure Modes and Behaviour of Lightweight Foamed Concrete Confined with Woven Fiberglass Mesh under Compression, Bending and Tension Loads

Abstract

Lightweight foamed concrete known as cellular concrete that was formed by the combination of mortar paste (cement,
sand, and water) and stable foam. Due to the presence of air entrained in the LFC matrix, this concrete is more brittle
than normal concrete. The inclusion of natural and synthetic fibre shows an improvement to the LFC behaviour but yet
give negative impact for the long-term performance. Whereas the deterioration of natural fibre (coir fibre, coconut
fibre, banana trunk, etc) and corrosion of synthetic fibre (carbon, steel, etc) affected the life span and durability of the
LFC. Thus, to address mentioned problem, textile fabric was used as strengthening element for LFC. In this research
study, authors only emphasize the failure modes and behaviour of LFC confined with different layers of 160g/m2
of
woven fiber glass mesh under compression, bending, and tension load. The mix ratio was fixed to 1.1:5 (cement to
sand ratio), and 0.45 for water. All specimens were cast at 1100 kg/m3
density. The result shows that the control
specimens under compression, bending, and tension loads faced sudden failure compared to the confined LFC. For the
1-layer confinement, the LFC under compression load, the vertical crack appeared at the corner of the specimen, while
for the 2 and 3 layers of woven fiber glass mesh, even though the specimens reached their maximum loads, they still
remained in good shape compared to the control and 1 layer confinement. Besides, under bending loading ,the
confinement of 1 to 3 layers of woven fiber glass mesh, the crack appeared at the bottom surface and propagated to the
top surface of the LFC specimen to form a vertical crack. Next, the failure modes of LFC under tension loads shows
that only a small crack appeared at the top surface of the specimens and a vertical mark at the lateral surface for the
LFC confined with 1 to 3 layers of woven fiber glass mesh. Therefore, the confinement of woven fiber glass mesh
improves the behaviour of LFC where it delayed the occurrence of crack propagation.