Abstract

Globally, the engineers and scientist are anxious about the environment in construction industry and are facing challenge of concrete as widely used material which called upon to develop very high strength and significant workability . Efforts are being made to develop such mortar with special characteristics. Researches all over the world are attempting to develop high performance of mortar by using natural fibers and other admixtures up to certain proportion.

Therefore experimental work is carried out to check mechanical properties like compressive and tensile strength of cubes having size 4"x4"x4" (100 mm x 100 mm x 100 mm) and cylinders 4"x 8" (1OOmm x 200mm) respectively with cement mortar ratio 1:3 (Cement : Sand) with w/c ratio 0.5 and addition of banana fiber % by wt as a reinforcement to improve both compressive and tensile strengths as well as other physical properties like specific gravity, water absorption, bulk density and dry density. The conventional cement mortar was compared with banana fiber reinforced mortar mix in which banana fiber were added from 0.25% to 2% by wt with an interval of 0.25%.


Both the mechanical and the physical properties were found comparatively better than the conventional cement mortar. Compressive and tensile strength was found at 0.5% banana fiber mixed with cement mortar. At that proportion strength along with dry density become optimum and specific gravity of specimens was within limit.


The result obtained are hoped to be very useful for the researchers in understanding the phenomenon of improving tensile strength of cement mortar by using banana fiber which is waste material available in abundant to produced economical cement mortar uses considerable improved properties.