Advanced Concreting Practice with Human Hair Waste as a Fiber Reinforcing Medium

Abstract

For the past years, steel had become the only option for reinforcement in concrete due to its high tensile strength. Now, it’s the need of an hour to come up with some alternative material which can give a high tensile strength than steel. Human hair waste is becoming a problem as it is a non–biodegradable waste material. This human hair is strong in tension and can be used as a reinforced material, so an attempt has been made in this research paper to utilize this human hair waste as a medium for tensile strength in concrete. So in this research paper, an innovative concept has been suggested by analyzing the possible effects which may arise by introducing human hair waste in plain cement concrete by considering the compressive and flexural strength of the concrete specimens. The experiment is conducted in two sets: In first set, concrete beams and cubes are casted with variable percentage of human hair fiber i.e. 0%, 1%, 1.5%, 2%, 2.5%, 3%, 3.5%, 4%, 4.5%, 5%, 5.5% and 6% by weight of the Pozzolonic Portland cement. For each combination of proportions of concrete, one beam and three cubes are tested for their mechanical properties to come up with a final optimum percentage for utilization of human hair fibers in concrete. By testing of cubes and beams we found that there is an increment in the various properties and strength of concrete by the addition of human hair as a fiber reinforcement and in the second set of the experiment the Pozzolonic Portland cement is partially replaced by a.) Rice husk ash (RHA) and b.) Mixture of rice husk ash (RHA) and broken ceramics powder along with human hair fibers. We found that the concrete blocks with mixture of RHA and ceramic powder with human hair fibers shows higher bulk density and compressive strength than other concrete specimens of first set.