Sisal Fiber as Steel Bar Replacement of Lightweight Concrete under Flexural Loading

The potential of natural resources such as pumice and sisal fiber for simple housing structural components is investigated in this research. Behavior of sisal fiber reinforcement of lightweight concrete beam under flexural loading was examined. The purpose of this study is to identify the prospect of sisal fiber as a replacement of steel bar reinforcement for structural element. The variations of reinforcement ratios were considered in order to optimize the performance of sisal fiber reinforcement. Twelve beam specimens size 100 x 150 mm with clean span of 1.5 m were examined in this investigation. Four variations of beam reinforcement were explored consist of 3 sisal fiber variation and 1 steel reinforcement as a control; where every variation was presented with three samples. Enerpac hydraulics Jack with 50 ton capacity connected to the load cell was operated as a source of loading. LVDT was fitted in the mid-span to measure vertical deflections during the loading. Test results indicated that the crack moment experiments were higher than the crack moment calculations. The valued were 1.44, 1.52, and 2.72 higher for sisal fiber reinforcement of B-LF, B-MF and B-HF, respectively. Whilst for steel reinforcement of B-LS the valued were 3.32 higher. Observation results also indicated that the moment resistant capacities of the specimens were twice higher compare to the calculated moment capacity. However, The lowest sisal reinforcement (B-LF) has only about 10% different service moment compare to the steel reinforcement (B-LS) where they both have equal ρ = 1.206 %. This indicate that the use of sisal fiber have considered as insignificant different service moment capacity to the steel reinforcement.