Benefits
Polypropylene and Nylon fibers can:
- Improve mix cohesion, improving pumpability over long distances
- Improve freeze-thaw resistance
- Improve resistance to explosive spalling in case of a severe fire
- Improve impact resistance
- Increase resistance to plastic shrinkage during curing
Steel fibers can:
- Improve structural strength
- Reduce steel reinforcement requirements
- Improve ductility
- Reduce crack widths and control the crack widths tightly, thus improving durability
- Improve impact– and abrasion–resistance
- Improve freeze-thaw resistance
Blends of both steel and polymeric fibers are often used in construction projects in order to combine the benefits of both products; structural improvements provided by steel fibers and the resistance to explosive spalling and plastic shrinkage improvements provided by polymeric fibers.
In certain specific circumstances, steel fiber can entirely replace traditional steel reinforcement bar ("rebar") in reinforced concrete. This is most common in industrial flooring but also in some other precasting applications. Typically, these are corroborated with laboratory testing to confirm that performance requirements are met. Care should be taken to ensure that local design code requirements are also met, which may impose minimum quantities of steel reinforcement within the concrete. There are increasing numbers of tunnelling projects using precast lining segments reinforced only with steel fibers.
Read more about this topic: Fiber-reinforced Concrete
Famous quotes containing the word benefits:
“It is too late in the century for women who have received the benefits of co-education in schools and colleges, and who bear their full share in the world’s work, not to care who make the laws, who expound and who administer them.”
—J. Ellen Foster (1840–1910)
“While greedy good-doers, beneficent beasts of prey,
Swarm over their lives enforcing benefits ...”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“One of your biggest jobs as a parent of multiples is no bigger than simply talking to your children individually and requiring that they respond to you individually as well. The benefits of this kind of communication can be enormous, in terms of the relationship you develop with each child, in terms of their language development, and eventually in terms of their sense of individuality, too.”
—Pamela Patrick Novotny (20th century)