Incorporating natural fibres for precast slab panels

The addition of small closely spaced and uniformly dispersed fibres to concrete can act as a crack arrester and improves its static and dynamic properties. This is known as fibre reinforced concrete, which can also be defined as the concrete containing fibrous materials which increases its structural performance. So usage of coconut coir as a replacement material for steel reinforcement cage in reinforced precast concrete slab panel will be investigated. At the initial stage concrete cubes, cylinders and prisms were casted with different coconut coir compositions (0.5%,1.0% &1.5%) for water cement ratio of 0.3. From that it has observed that 1% of coconut coir would give the optimum result for concrete having 0.3 water cement ratio. Two sets of slab specimens as control specimen (without coconut coir) and with optimum percentage (1.0%) of coconut coir were casted and subjected to center-point line loading test (ASTM C 293) and dropping weight test (ASTM D 1557) to evaluate structural suitability and impact energy absorption of precast slab panel. Concrete permeability apparatus used to compare the water permeability between plain concrete and coconut coir mixed concrete