Mechanical Response of Short Fiber Reinforced Fly Ash Based Geopolymer Composites

The requirement for environmentally friendly construction materials for sustainable development is nowadays an important issue and the geopolymer technology provides a good solution to replace, as binder, the ordinary cement materials for green building. Fly ash, an industrial by-product currently disposed of as waste, can be used as feedstock for geopolymers with an excellent greenness. In order to preserve the eco-friendly nature of the fly ash based geopolymer and enhance the mechanical properties that represent a weak point of the cementitious materials, limiting their application fields, a new fly ash based geopolymer composite was introduced. For this purpose, inorganic, organic and natural short fibers, i.e. Eglass, aramid and hemp respectively, were considered as reinforcement. The mechanical response of these composites under quasi-static and dynamic load conditions was investigated and compared to plain geopolymers, drawing the attention to the hemp reinforced ones, because of their low coast and eco-friendly nature.