Chemical durability and performance of modified basalt fiber in concrete medium

Due to the concern about mechanical properties, thermal resistance, ecological friendliness and chemical resistance, basalt fibers have become intriguing now a days for infrastructural and civil engineering applications. In the present work, chemical durability of modified and non-modified basalt fibers is studied. The fibers were immersed into twelve solutions for 62 days considering the concrete medium. The failure pattern and damage features of the fibers were sorted with the observation of surface by scanning electron microscope (SEM) and their compositions were identified using energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX). Long term mass retention capacity was also summarized. Efforts were also made to determine the strength maintenance rate of modified fibers in high performance ordinary portland cement (OPC) and high volume fly Ash (HVFA) concrete. The result revealed that the modified fiber exhibits superior properties compared to the non-modified fibers based on morphological and chemical analysis. Mechanical test results also showed that the modified basalt fiber can significantly improve the indirect tensile and flexural properties of HVFA concrete even after 56 days.