Suitability of locally manufactured galvanized iron (GI) wire fiber as reinforcing fiber in brick chip concrete

A case study has been conducted in order to improve concrete quality in Bangladesh, using fiber reinforcing techniques with locally available low-cost Galvanized Iron (GI) wire fibers. GI wire is in fact mild steel wire with a thin coating of zinc. In order to assess the suitability of GI wire fibers as an alternative to steel fibers, various properties of GI wire fibers i.e. tensile strength, bending capacity etc. have been investigated and compared with the properties of steel fibers in light of relevant ACI and ASTM guidelines. Various tests were conducted on GI wire fibers as well as plain concrete reinforced with GI wire fibers. The experimental results show that GI wire fiber has compatible properties with steel fibers. Moreover, compressive strength, flexural strength, toughness indices and residual strength factors of GI wire fiber reinforced concrete (GFRC) have shown significant improvement compared to normal concrete. A comparison with Steel Fiber Reinforced Concrete (SFRC) revealed that performance of GFRC is quite similar to that of SFRC. It was observed that fiber content of 2.5-3.5% by weight produces relatively better results for the particular mix design used in the study. Furthermore, a cost analysis reveals that SFRC is about 19% more expensive than GFRC in Bangladesh; for 1 cubic meter of concrete work when fiber dosage is 2.5% by weight. Therefore, the study finds that GFRC has shown some promising results to be a low-cost alternative to steel fiber reinforced concrete from Bangladesh’s perspective.