Mechanical behaviours of green hybrid fibre-reinforced cementitious composites

• Development of cementitious composites reinforced with bagasse fibre and steel fibre.
• Calibration of the mechanical properties of the bagasse fibres.
• Calibration of the mechanical properties of the new green composites.
• Evaluation on the influence of the content of bagasse fibres and fly ash.

New green cementitious composites reinforced with bagasse fibre and steel fibre with ultra-high volume of fly ash are developed in this paper. The mechanical properties of bagasse fibre such as the tensile strength, Young’s modulus and stress–strain relationship are determined via conducting single fibre tensile test. Mechanical behaviours of the new composites, including compressive strength, Young’s modulus, bending behaviour and uniaxial tensile behaviour, are investigated experimentally. The influence of the content of bagasse fibres and fly ash on the mechanical behaviour of the composites is also evaluated. The obtained results show that the compressive strength, Young’s modulus, modulus of rupture and tensile strength of the composites decrease with the deduction of the content of the fly ash and bagasse fibre, but the bending toughness and tensile ductility of the material increase with fly ash content and peak as fly ash to cement ratio achieves 2.0. It is found that the mechanical properties of the composites are comparable to those of conventional concrete and are very promising green and sustainable construction and building materials and have strong potential to be used in engineering practice.