Determination of the Workability, Setting Time and the Compressive Strength of Concrete Made of Polystyrene Fibre

1.0 Abstract This work presents the determination of structural characteristics of profile sheet-polystyrene fibre reinforced composite slab. It investigates the compressive strength, flexural strength and deflection of slab of profile sheet with concrete mixture of polystyrene beads, cement and sand with agro fibre reinforcement. The materials used include: ordinary limestone cement, fine aggregate, coarse aggregate, polystyrene beads, profile sheet, agro fibre, 10mm reinforcement bars, binding wire and water. Manual mixing operation was adopted, and all polystyrene concrete ingredients were batched by weight. Many number of cubes of size 150mm x 150mm x 150mm were produced from six different mix ratios of cement: sand: polystyrene beads, for compressive strength test. Also, a total of sixteen slabs of size 1200mm x 558mm x 125mm were cast for flexural strength of slab. Out of the sixteen(16) slabs cast; Twelve (12) were produced from profile sheet- polystyrene fibre reinforced composite with mix ratio 0.45:1:3:3 and six different fibre content in the mixture, two were produced from conventional composite having normal concrete ingredients (coarse aggregates, fine aggregates, cement and water) with 10mm rebar, profile sheet and mix ratio of 0.45:1:2:4. The remaining two slabs were made from plain polystyrene fibre reinforced slab with mix ratio of 0.45:1:3:3 and 0.31% Agro fibre content in the mixture, without profile sheet. The 28th day average compressive strength for the six mix ratios used were 4.81MPa, 5.3MPa, 6.2MPa, 6.4MPa 4.33MPa, and3.08MPa respectively. The average static modulus of elasticity for the six (6) mix ratios were 7.42GPa, 7.49GPa, 7.71GPa, 7.71GPa, 6.03GPa, and 3.66GPa respectively. The compressive strength of polystyrene concrete was below normal structural concrete value. Polystyrene concrete is a light-weight concrete in terms of density. Keywords: Flexural strength, Agro fibre, Slab, profile sheet, polystyrene beads, compressive strength, , static modulus of elasticity and deflection.