Investigation on Shrinkage Characteristics of Polyester-Fiber-Reinforced Cement-Stabilized Concrete Considering Fiber Length and Content

Abstract

Polyester-fiber-reinforced cement-stabilized concrete is widely adopted to prevent the shrinkage cracking in pavement engineering. However, the effects of fiber length and content on the dry shrinkage and temperature shrinkage are not clear. The relationship between shrinkage resistance and strength is also discussed scantily. Hence, five types of polyester fiber length (1 cm, 3 cm, 5 cm, 7 cm, and 9 cm) and six types of polyester fiber content (0.1‰, 0.3‰, 0.5‰, 0.7‰, 0.9‰, and 1.1‰) were selected to prepare the fiber-reinforced cement-stabilized concrete. The dry shrinkage coefficients and temperature shrinkage coefficients were used to evaluate the shrinkage resistance. Moreover, the relationships among these shrinkage coefficients, compressive strength, and splitting strength at different curing ages were investigated to realize the prediction of shrinkage resistance of polyester-fiber-reinforced cement-stabilized concrete. This study aimed to seek the optimal fiber characteristics and conveniently evaluate the shrinkage resistance for the polyester-fiber-reinforced cement-stabilized concrete. Results show that: increasing the content of polyester fiber can significantly improve the shrinkage resistance of cement-stabilized concrete, especially for the temperature shrinkage. The fiber length should not be too long, especially for dry shrinkage. The optimum fiber content and fiber length is 0.7‰ and 5 cm for the dry shrinkage resistance and 0.7‰ and 9 cm for the temperature shrinkage resistance. There was higher correlation between compressive strengths and shrinkage coefficients, while the correlation between splitting strength and shrinkage coefficients was not obvious.