Study on palmyrah as a reinforcement material

Abstract

Most developing countries Abstract: are confronted with acute housing shortage due to their over dependence on expensive, imported building materials. So there is an intense search for innovation of locally available, nature friendly materials.Palmyrah is widely spread all over North East region in Sri Lanka and has found use in many structural applications. This research explores the feasibility of using Palmyrah strips as an alternative for reinforcing steel in short span, lightly loaded slabs and beams.Structure of this research consisted of literature survey, testing mechanical properties of Palmyrah, basic design, construction and testing of Palmyrah reinforced concrete slabs and beams, analysing of results and recommendation.Static bending test, tensile test and compression test were conducted to identify characteristic strength and stiffness properties along with density and moisture content. Water absorption with time was also studied. Slabs and beams with varying reinforcement percentages were constructed and tested.Failure loads, crack loads, mode of failure and crack patterns of test slabs and beams were observed. Flexural capacity of concrete slabs and beams reinforced with Palmyrah strips was evaluated.lt was observed that Palmyrah reinforcement enhanced the failure load of the slab by 107% and failure load of beam by 370%. Experimental failure load of slab and beam averaged 140% and 164% of theoretically predicted value respectively. Both beams and slab had flexural failure by fracture of Palmyrah strips and their failure loads increased with increase of Palmyrah reinforcement.Thus it is concluded that Palmyrah strips has potential to be used as reinforcement in lightly loaded slabs and beams.