International Research Journal of Innovations in Engineering and Technology (IRJIET) ISSN (online): 2581-3048 Volume 4, Issue 9, pp 14-18, September-2020 https://doi.org/10.47001/IRJIET/2020.409003 © 2017-2020 IRJIET All Rights Reserved www.irjiet.com SJIF Impact Factor: 4.66 14 Effects of Barley Straw and Plastic Fibers on Pozzolan Cement Concrete Properties Manal O. Suliman Department of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering, Jaresh University, Jaresh, Jordan Abstract - In the past few decades, some researches have been devoted to use of plastic fibers and other waste materials as additive materials in concrete in order to improve the tensile and compressive strength as well as ductile properties of concrete. Due to these effects this experimental work was undertaken aiming to investigate the behavior of Plastic fibers concrete and barley straw fibers concrete by using readily available local materials. To accomplish the objective, experiments were conducted on plastic fibers concrete and barley straw fibers concrete. The principal variable of the testing program is the amount (percent by weight) of plastic fibers and barley straw fibers which used as replacement of fine aggregate by the following ratio at (0.1%, 0.5%, 1%, and 2%) by weight respectively. Specimens were prepared and tested under standard specification for slump, and compressive strength. The result of the study indicated that the fresh concrete was good enough workable up to 0.5% replacement of plastic fibers. On the other hand the present of barley straw fibers results in decreasing the workability for all replacement ratios. The addition of plastic fibers to concrete mix results in improvement of the compressive strength for the concrete mixture up to ratio (1% or less) of plastic fibers. But adding barley straw fibers in concrete mix has a significant effect on decreasing the compressive strength of concrete. Keywords: Barley straw fibers, Plastic fibers, Concrete, Compressive strength, Properties. I. INTRODUCTION The conventional steel reinforcement concrete makes the reinforced concrete structure heavy and due to water or moisture diffusion through micro cracks developed, steel starts corroding leading to failure of concrete. Moreover, although steel reinforced bars provide strength to the concrete members, they however do not increase the inherent tensile strength concrete itself. They also falls short of desirable properties like toughness, ductility, controlling cracking and energy absorption property because the reinforcement component in reinforced cement concrete is present in certain pockets of the cross section of the structural member. Therefore it is essential to distribute the reinforcement uniformly throughout the cross section by adding short fibers of small diameter that are metallic or nonmetallic to the constituents of the concrete mix. Fibers in the cement based matrix acts as cracks arrester, which confines the growth of flaws in the matrix, preventing these from enlarging under load, into cracks, which eventually cause severe failure. Restriction of propagation of cracks originating from internal flaws can result in improvements in static and dynamic properties of concrete. Abhishek Jandiyal et al (2016) [1] provide a brief overview on using of plastic fibers made from waste pet bottles in concrete and indicated what aspects of conventional concrete were modified. Recent literature [Wang and Han (2018)[2], Farooqi and Ali (2016)[3], Cai et al. (2017)[4], Akhras and Afoul (2001)[5], Bouasker et al. (2014)[6], Chen et al. (2017)[7], Munshi et al. (2013)[8], Belhadj et al. (2016)[9], Xie et al. (2016)[10] ] have shown that agricultural waste such as rice and wheat straw can be used in the concrete mix. Studies made by these researchers were conducted on the effect of these natural fibers on the mechanical and physical behavior of concrete, and the results show that the composite achieved considerable strength and toughness. This study aim to expand the knowledge of aggregate substitutes by investigate the viability of locally available waste materials to form an adaptation of conventional concrete which referred as Green Concrete. The two materials investigated in this study were plastic materials from soft drinks bottles waste and natural barley straw; these materials were used to partially replace fine aggregate and were selected because it is a lighter material than the aggregate it replaces and hence this may result in lighter concrete mixes. If strength is not compromised the use of these materials can be of benefit in terms of reducing the permanent load on a structure. II. MATERIALS AND MIX DESIGN METHODOLOGY The experimental program was planned to investigate the effect of using barley straw fiber and plastic fiber on the fresh and mechanical properties of concrete, a reference plain concrete mixture was used to compare the results.