High strength fiber reinforced one-part alkali activated slag composites from industrial side streams

This paper details the effect of fiber reinforcement on mechanical characteristics of by-products based one-part alkali activated material (AAM). Two different binder matrices were considered in this study, such as, plain slag, and ternary blended slag, to understand their efficiency in fiber reinforced system. These matrices were reinforced with 1% v/v of three different fibers (steel, glass and basalt) to improve the flexural performance of high strength mortar blends. Steel fiber reinforced one-part AAM outperforms mineral fibers in compressive strength contribution. The fracture energy of steel fiber reinforced compositions was roughly 4 times higher than that of mineral fiber reinforced materials. In addition, the flexural performance of ternary blended matrix was higher than that of slag-based composition regardless fiber types and properties. Finally, preliminary finite element modelling was considered to assess the applicability of the concrete damage plasticity constitutive model in predicting the nonlinear behavior of the developed composites. The numerical predictions proved the accuracy of the model with good agreement between experimental and numerical results.