This study has reviewed the performance of polypropylene fiber reinforced concrete. Moreover, a better understanding of their application in concrete crossties was achieved. Additional research is needed in order to improve upon these findings. Some of the key topics which could be studied in future are as follows.
It is essential to evaluate performance of other types of polypropylene fibers. These include fibers of different pattern, crimp sizes, shapes, cross-section, etc. Moreover, a higher range of fiber dosage could be experimented by adjusting the material mixture
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design of concrete, ensuring the workability of the concrete is not compromised. These studies could result in achieving a higher residual load-carrying capacity for fiber reinforced concrete and greater crack resistance.
The potential for self-consolidating concrete to accommodate higher fiber proportions than the ones studied in this research work needs to be investigated. Additionally, the self-consolidating concrete mixtures could be modified to achieve compressive strength requirements of a railway crosstie. The various fiber proportions need to be tested for this modified mixture design. Moreover, different types of fibers could be investigated for their influence on rheology.
The prototype crossties could be investigated for different prestress level and quantity for prestressing. These studies could be performed to propose an optimized crosstie design based on the specific requirements in the field. Moreover, higher proportions of fibers could be studied in order to achieve better post-peak behavior in crossties.
The preliminary tensile stress-strain models for fiber reinforced concrete obtained from various approaches should be utilized for finite element analysis (FEA) of fiber
reinforced concrete specimens. The FEA modelling should be done to replicate the four- point bending of fiber reinforced concrete beam specimens. The load-displacement response obtained from the FEA models can be compared with the experimental results and thus the preliminary tensile stress-strain models can be further refined to reduce the dissimilarity, if any, between the FEA results and experimental results. Eventually, the advanced tensile stress-strain model of fiber reinforced concrete can be incorporated in FEA models of crossties in order to interpret the experimental results.
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90 APPENDIX A
AVERAGE RESIDUAL STRENGTH FOR FIBER REINOFRCED CONCRETE