Engineering properties of concrete reinforced with Oil Palm Fiber (OPF) / Muhammad Fakhruddin bin Ali

Project paper (Bachelor of Civil Engineering) -- Universiti Malaysia Pahang - 2007

Malaysia is among biggest oil palm producer alongside Brazil and Indonesia. This can be proven from the area of palm oil tree plantation have reach thousand acres across peninsular Malaysia and more in Sabah and Sarawak and the figures are predicted to increase due to positive increasement in world oil palm needs. However, the economic lifespan for oil palm tree is only 25 years and after the duration, the tree will be cut down and disposed. It will cost the environment so much when the cut down tree was burnt down, disposed in dumping site and left decay at plantation are that sometimes will affect young trees with fungal. Therefore, there should be an effort to use the cut down trees and applied for good purpose not only for human being but for environment. Thus, the cut down oil palm tree will be extract to take it fibers. Oil palm fiber (OPF) that extract from the trees can be used as fiber reinforcement in concrete. These fibers will functions same as glass fiber, polymer fiber and bamboo fiber that placed into concrete to improve the strength of the concrete. In this study OPF were use to improve properties of the concrete and testing had been done to evaluate the physical properties is slump test, vebe test and compacting factor test while to measured mechanical properties is splitting tensile test, compressive strength test and flexural strength test. Test that been done with different volume percentage OPF (0%, 1%, 2%, 3%, and 4%). At the end of the study, it can observe that addition of OPF with certain volume percentage greatly increase the strength of the concrete and the optimum volume of OPF added can be seen from the result that obtain from the experiment. -Author.