Bond strength in PVA fibre reinforced fly ash-based geopolymer concrete

This paper presents the effect of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) fibre on the bond strength in geopolymer concrete. The main focus of the study is to investigate how bond performance is affected by varying the amount of PVA fibre content. The PVA fibre content of 0 %, 0.2 %, 0.4 %, 0.6 % and 0.8 % by volume of concrete were utilized. Alkali activated class F fly ash was used to prepare the concrete specimens. Moreover, the Ordinary Portland cement (OPC) specimen was also prepared to conduct the comparative study. The results showed that the application of PVA fibre improves the bond resistance between the pull-out bar and concrete matrix. It has been investigated that the utilization of PVA fibre in geopolymer concrete improves up to 25.9 % bond strength as compared with the concrete without PVA fibre. The addition of PVA fibre provides a more ductile mode of failure in both geopolymer and OPC concrete than to the concrete without PVA fibre. For the different percentages of PVA fibre used, the specimen with 0.6 % PVA fibre shows maximum compressive strength, splitting and bond strength. The comparative study reveals that the specimen with and without PVA fibre blended geopolymer concrete shows higher bond strength than OPC concrete.