Fire resistance of high-performance concrete reinforced with selected fibers

Abstract

One of the biggest issues of high-performance concrete is its behavior during fire. Because of the much lower amount of pores in high-performance concrete, extremely high water vapor pressure is created. This leads to explosive spalling of the concrete. One way to prevent this effect is by adding fibers to the concrete mixture. In this article, the impact of commonly used polypropylene fibers is compared to that of flax fibers and viscose fibers. Subsequently, mechanical compressive and flexural strength were tested on those samples that remained intact after the fire experiment. Their mechanical properties were compared with the reference samples without exposure to fire at the same age.