Fracture toughness and failure mechanism of high performance concrete incorporating carbon nanotubes (original) (raw)

Cement and concrete composites are inherently brittle and exhibit very less tensile/flexural strength capacity as compared to their compressive strength. Use of thoroughly dispersed carbon nanotubes in the concrete matrix is one of the possible solution for enhancing mechanical properties in tension/flexure. In the present research work, small fractions of multiwall carbon nanotube (MWCNTs) i.e. 0.05 and 0.10 wt% of cement have been integrated into the cement concrete to study their effect on the mechanical properties of the resultant concrete mixtures. The enhanced performance of the whole mix lies on a single point that MWCNTs must be thoroughly disperse in the mixture. Hence, special arrangement through usage of high energy sonication along with amended acrylic based polymer (performing as a surfactant) was made to have a uniform dispersion of MWCNTs in the concrete mix. The testing of concrete samples includes i.e., flexure, splitting tensile and compressive strengths after 3, 7, 28 and 56 days of curing. After having comparison with the control mix cured for 28 days, it was observed that the addition of 0.05 wt% MWCNTs increased the splitting