Revista de Ciência e Engenharia Têxtil

Coir Fiber Reinforced Concrete

Abstract

Dhandhania VA and Sawant S

Green approach refers to a use of natural and renewable source of energy replacing or reducing environmentally unfriendly materials like steel. The present study discusses about the importance of coconut fiber as an ad-mixture for roofing, its advantages and scope in future. As we all know, steel is used as a reinforcing material for holding the concrete and making it crack resistant. But, due to its number of demerits, which includes its high cost, nonrecyclability,corrosiveness, high weight and low strength ratio, with time, a number of innovations have taken place.
‘‘Textile Composites’’ entertains the use of coconut fiber, which can also be used as a strengthening material for roofing apart from steel. Two inherently different materials out of which one belongs to textiles are mixed to form a new material, different to both but better in properties are called as textile composites.

Use of coconut fiber (Coir) should be valued over Steel for the following reasons like low cost, recyclability, noncorrosiveness, low thermal conductivity (natural cooling), high strength and low weight ratio. In earthquake prone areas where frequent damage to infrastructure takes place, the use of Natural fibers such as Coir instead of steel will prove advantageous. In this paper, we will be focusing on the above-mentioned points in detail and our research work will prove that use of coconut fiber in roofing proved to be very lucrative.