Sustainable Engineered Cementitious Composite using Natural Sisal and Coir Fibers Patria Kusumaningrum (a*), Suranta Sembiring (b), Zaki Anwar F (c)
(a,b,c) Civil Engineering Department, Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Bandung Institute of Technology
Jl. Ganesha 10 Bandung, 40132, Indonesia
*patria.k[at]itb.ac.id
Abstract
Engineered Cementitious Concrete (ECC) or bendable concrete is a high-performance concrete (HPC) of high ductility characteristic. Generally, it has been used to strengthen or retrofit the existing structures to enhance the structural resilience against extreme loadings such as earthquake or blast. The constituent materials are fine aggregates, cement, supplementary cementitious composite (silica fume, fly ash, etc.), superplasticizer, water, and the use of fibers up to 2% volume fraction. With the use of fibers and elimination of coarse aggregate, ECC has deflection-hardening in bending and exhibit fiber-bridging by multiple cracking. However, the development of ECC has so far been limited using only synthetic and inorganic fibers which are scarse yet expensive in Indonesia. As Indonesia boasts the second highest level of biodiversity in the world as the source of natural fibers, in this research the natural fibers are used to replace synthetic and inorganic fibers in making ECC more sustainable, low cost yet locally available. Not only did the natural fibers are locally available with affordable price, the fibers also have distinctive characteristics of sustainable materials with high tensile strength and significant elongation. From the experiments, one may be concluded that natural fibers of sisal and coir can improve the ECC flexural strength up to 40% of the non fiber mix. This highlights its ability in replacing synthetic and inorganic fibers in ECC mixture.
