Investigation on slag fiber characteristics: Mechanical property and anti-corrosion performance

Inorganic fiber shows good insulation performance in civil construction and industry insulation. In the present paper, tensile strength of slag fiber produced with molten blast furnace slag was investigated systematically with the Weibull distribution theory in comparison with glass and basalt fibers. It was found that the mean tensile strength reached 2578.60 MPa and the shape parameter m in Weibull distribution is 2.4494, which indicates a lower uniformity. Anti-corrosion performances were also studied by means of the mass and strength loss after acid and alkaline solution treatment. Furthermore, SEM and FTIR were used to analyze the structural characteristics of original and treated fibers. This work has proved that the H+ and OH− can both break the Si–O bond and then lead to the movement to high wavenumber for the bands of the symmetric stretching vibrations of [SiO4]-tetrahedra. The anti-corrosion results indicated that slag fibers could not be used in acid environment, while its anti-alkali performance is relatively excellent compared with glass and basalt fibers.