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Article history: This study was to investigate the effect of coconut coir on the strength and durability properties of
Received 25 November 2016 cement-lime surface plaster mortar. The purpose of adding coconut coir into the mortar was due to
Received in revised form 18 February 2017 coconut coir had a capacity in controlling cracking in the mortar. In this study, total 115 samples were
Accepted 9 March 2017
prepared which were 100 cubes (150 mm 150 mm 150 mm) and 15 beam prisms
Available online 17 March 2017
(100 mm 100 mm 500 mm). Testing was included; water absorption, porosity, sorption rate for
physical properties; acid attack resistance, alkaline attack resistance for durability properties; compres-
Keywords:
sion and flexural bending for strength properties. The samples were tested with mortar containing
Masonry
Surface plaster
0.125%, 0.25%, 0.50% and 0.75% of coconut coir. The percentage of coconut coir fraction was calculated
Coconut coir based on the cement, lime, sand mix by mass. Test results show that, although compressive and flexural
Reinforcement bending strength are not improving, but post crack properties such as ductility, residual strength, and
Flexural strength toughness are increased with higher coconut coir fraction in the matrix.
Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2017.03.058
0950-0618/Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
24 N. Sathiparan et al. / Construction and Building Materials 142 (2017) 23–30
structure but also the procedure for retrofitting techniques for Lime: Commercial grade hydrated builder’s lime.
masonry buildings should be as simple as possible to be applicable Coconut coir: Locally available untreated coir, which average length is around
24 mm and diameter is around 20 lm. The geometrical properties of the coco-
in developing countries [19]. nut coir are shown in Fig. 1.
Therefore, In the last few years, more research focused toward
the application of Fibre Reinforced Polymer materials added sur- Sieve analysis and chemical composition analysis were carried out for each
face mortar as strengthening technic for masonry retrofitting. material, which is used for mortar. Particle size distribution curves of the materials
Due to their easy application and their favorable structural perfor- used for the preparation of mortar are shown in Fig. 2. Physical properties and
chemical composition are summarized in Table 1.
mances, it is a possible solution for retrofitting of masonry struc-
tures and especially low seismic region like SriLanka. Generally,
unreinforced cementitious matrices as a surface plaster for 2.2. Mix design
masonry only improve the appears, but not in structural behavior.
However, an inclusion of fibres in cementitious matrices is an The selected mortar, cement: lime: sand ratio was 1:2:8 by volume, which is
classified as a mortar designation (iv) in British standards. Volume proportions
improvement in the post-crack behavior. A wide variety of fibres were converted into weight for avoiding inaccurate measurement. Mortar mix
has been proposed by the researchers such as steel, glass, was incorporated with coconut coir fractions of 0.125%, 0.25%, 0.5% and 0.75%.
polypropylene, etc. [20,21]. The percentage of coconut coir fraction was calculated based on the cement, lime,
The other side, SriLanka as an agricultural country has many sand mix by mass.
For mortar mix preparation, the slump was previously set to 160 mm. Table 2
source natural fibres, such as coconut coir, banana fibre, sugarcane
summarized the material mix and amount of water required for achieving that
pulp, pineapple leaf. Most parts of the SriLanka, natural fibres such slump value. When a higher percentage of coconut coir was used in the mortar
as coconut coir is available as waste. So, here an attempt has been mix, the amount of water required increased dramatically. Past research results
made to investigate the possibility of reusing coconut coir waste revealed that an increase in fibre fractions significantly decreased the workability
for surface mortar reinforcement. Past studies have reported sev- of cement mortar [26,27]. In this experimental program, the slump was previously
set; the addition of coconut coir involved an increase in the required amount of
eral benefits of the incorporation of coconut fibres into concrete, water.
cement paste, cement: sand mix [22–24]. Coconut fibre in these
materials can enhance the ductility, flexural toughness, and energy
absorption capacity. A review of past studies indicates that in spite 2.3. Specimens preparation
of numerous researches done on coconut coir reinforced concrete,
Cubes with dimension 150 150 150 mm3 and beam prisms
little attention has been paid to evaluate the durability and 100 100 500 mm3 were prepared for control mortar and coconut coir added
mechanical behavior of coconut coir reinforced cement-lime- mortar. The three cubes were used to determine the density, water absorption rate,
sand mortar, which is commonly used for the surface plastering
work of masonry. There is little previous research about the effect
of coconut coir, incorporated into surface plaster mortars [23]. But,
study on durability and strength behavior coconut coir added sur-
face plastering mortar, still scarce. Therefore, this study was aimed
at understanding of the coconut coir effect on durability and
strength of surface plastering mortar by experimental programs.
The aim of the experimental program was to investigate the mechanical and
durability properties of coconut coir added mortar, which can be used as surface
plaster. In this study, following materials used for mortar preparation;
Fig. 1. Geometrical properties of the coconut coir (a) length distribution; (b) diameter distribution.
N. Sathiparan et al. / Construction and Building Materials 142 (2017) 23–30 25
Table 1 P
rC ¼ ð4Þ
Physical properties and chemical composition of material used. A
Cement Lime Sand where P is the maximum applied load; A is the area of bed face.
Pl
rT ¼ 1:5 2
ð5Þ
bd
sorptivity, porosity, acid attack resistance, and alkaline attack resistance, while five
cubes for compression strength and three beams for flexural tensile strength was where P is the applied load; l the span length; b and d are the width and depth of the
used. Specimens were cured for 28 days before testing. mid-span section respectively.
The porosity is calculated according to the ASTM C642-13 [28] by using the Eq.
(2); 3. Results and discussion
ðWs WdÞ
Porisity ð%Þ ¼ 100% ð2Þ 3.1. Properties of fresh mortar
ðWs WwÞ
Table 2
Material mix and water requirement for mortar.
Coconut coir (%) Cement (kg) Lime (kg) Sand (kg) Coconut coir (g) Water /Cement & lime binder ratio
0.000 1.0 1.1 8.67 0.0 0.62
0.125 1.0 1.1 8.67 13.5 0.76
0.250 1.0 1.1 8.67 26.9 0.80
0.500 1.0 1.1 8.67 53.8 0.89
0.750 1.0 1.1 8.67 80.8 0.95
26 N. Sathiparan et al. / Construction and Building Materials 142 (2017) 23–30
Fig. 3. Specimen dimension for material test (a) Compression test and (b) Flexural bending test.
Fig. 4. Properties of fresh mortar (a) water/binder ratio, (b) flow value, and (c) setting time.
228 min, 220 min and 215 min, which are shortened by 3 min,
6 min, 14 min and 19 min, in comparison to the setting time of
control mortar. It shows that there is not a significant effect of
the coconut coir on the setting times of mortar.
3.2. Density
The weight and volume of the control cement mortar cube and
those containing different percentages of coconut coir were mea-
sured. Fig. 5 shows the density of cement mortar with a variation
of coconut coir fraction. The level of variation is shown in the figure
by the error bars. The result has shown the density of coconut coir
reinforced (CCR) mortar is less than the control cement mortar. It is
also observed that both bulk and dry density of cement block has
decreased with an increase in the coconut coir fraction.
Fig. 8. Compression failure pattern of (a) control mortar cube and (b) CCR mortar with 0.50% coconut coir.
28 N. Sathiparan et al. / Construction and Building Materials 142 (2017) 23–30
Fig. 9. The effect of coconut coir fraction on the compressive strength of mortar
cube. Fig. 11. Compressive fracture energy versus coconut coir content.
ever, for all the ranges of coconut coir fraction, the compressive
strength of CCR mortars varies within ±6% of control mortar.
Uniaxial compression tests were carried out on cement blocks
deriving the stress–strain curves in Fig. 10. Even though pre-peak
behavior looks like similar for all the cement mortar cases, post
peak behavior reveals significant variation in compression. The
addition of coconut coir tends to reduce the modulus of elasticity
by slightly. However, in the post-peak behavior, some of the stress
developed transfer through the coconut coir intersecting with the
cracks. Due to coconut coir provide enough force to withstand
the crack opening and instead crack widening it is distributing
the stress. Therefore, the presence of coconut coir reduces the
unstable crack propagation in cement composite matrix and intro-
duce a better distributed cracking. As a result, cement composite
with coconut coir behaves more ductile than that of the control
mortar.
In Fig. 11, the effect of coconut coir content on the compressive Fig. 12. The effect of coconut coir fraction on the Initial and residual flexural tensile
fracture energy of the cement composite is presented. Compressive strength for CCR and control mortar.
fracture energy was directly computed as the integral of the post-
peak curve of the stress–displacement graph. For calculation, defor-
mation corresponds to 50% drop in peak strength is considered as with the control mortar. Higher flexural tensile strength observed
test end. The result shows the addition of coconut coir results in in 0.5% of coconut coir fraction as 1.07 MPa, which is 6% higher
greater energy absorption and improves post peak behavior. than control mortar. When coconut coir fraction is increased to
0.75%, it shows the 16.5% decreased in the flexural tensile strength
of CCR mortar.
3.6. Flexural bending behavior Flexural toughness is an important property for cement mortar.
Flexural toughness index is an effective benchmark for comparing
As seen in Fig. 12, the modulus of rupture of CCR mortar has the energy absorption of a specimen during its post-crack period
slightly increased in value with coconut coir fractions as compared with that before its pre-crack period. The flexural toughness index
was determined according to ASTM 1609 [32]. The toughness is
calculated from the total area under the load-deflection curve up
to a net deflection of 1⁄150 of the span length. Fig. 13 shows the
normalized toughness, which is the ratio of coconut coir reinforced
mortar toughness with respect to control mortar toughness.
Since the specimen surface was not perfectly flat, there was ini-
tial displacement before the load was actually applied to the spec-
imen. The initial displacement, which was defined as an interval
from the beginning of the test to the point at which linear load
increase was observed, was not used in the calculation of mechan-
ical properties. For all CCR mortar, the flexural ductility increased
with the coconut coir percentage, as shown in Fig. 14.
Fig. 15 shows the weight loss of control and CCR mortar of dif-
ferent percentage of coconut coir due to acid attack. As seen from
Fig. 10. Experimental stress–strain curves for cement block in compression. the figure, it could be observed that weight loss at the age of 30 and
N. Sathiparan et al. / Construction and Building Materials 142 (2017) 23–30 29
Weight loss for control and CCR mortar due to alkaline tests
were presented in Fig. 16. From the results, it was observed that
weight loss at the age of 30 and 60 days gradually increased as
the percentage of coconut coir fraction increased. Maximum
weight loss of 0.72% at 60 days occurred for 0.75% coconut coir
fraction mortar, and whereas other CCR mortar and control mortar,
the weight loss is less than 0.5%, which can be considered as an
acceptable level.
4. Conclusion
Fig. 14. Flexural ductility variation with coconut coir fraction percentage in cement Plain surface plastering mortar (cement-lime-sand) is a brittle
mortar.
material. To overcome the brittle response of the mortar, fibres
in mortar serve as crack arrestor which can create a stage of slow
crack propagation and gradual failure. Furthermore, natural fibres
offer exceptional mechanical properties, including high toughness
and flexibility, which enhance the ductility of relatively brittle
cement matrixes. This study has presented the experimental
results investigating the physical, mechanical and durability prop-
erties of coconut coir reinforced mortar. Experimental test results
can be summarized as follows:
The water/binder ratio of the mortar increased with the
increase in the coconut coir content. Flow value and setting time
decreased with increasing content of coconut coir in the mortar
mixes.
The addition of coconut coir in the mortar tends to slightly
reduce bulk and dry density.
Water absorption, porosity, initial sorptivity and subsequent
sorptivity were increased with the addition of the coconut coir.
All these properties have increased due to problems in the mixing
Fig. 15. Weight loss in acid test. and the creation of fibres clusters and that leave voids and inter-
connected porosity inside the cement composite matrix.
The compressive strength of cement blocks improved with
60 days gradually increased as the coconut coir fraction in mortar additions of coconut coir up to 0.5% fraction, but a decrease in
increased. Also, it could be observed that there is not much weight 0.75% fraction compared to control blocks.
loss variation for control mortar and mortar mix with 0.5% coconut The flexural property results suggest that the presence of coir
coir fraction at the age of 30 days. However, it shows that the rate fibres in the cement, lime mortar promoted a significant increase
of increase in weight loss between 30 to 60 days was steep for in residual strength, toughness, and ductility, and also up to 0.5%
higher coconut coir fraction mortar. Especially, for mortar with fraction of coir fraction, little improvement in the flexural strength.
0.75% coconut coir fraction, it shows the higher weight loss of Durability against alkaline attack and the acid attack was
1.75%, which is almost three times higher than control mortar. reduced by increases in the fraction of coconut coir in the mortar.
30 N. Sathiparan et al. / Construction and Building Materials 142 (2017) 23–30
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