Experimental Study on the Addition of Date palm Fibers as a Reinforcement in Gypsum Mortar

Abstract

Libya is considered one of the major Arab countries in the cultivation of palm trees, as it holds the fifth place in the Arab world in the number of palm trees with about 8 million of them planted on estimated area of 70 thousand hectares. The present paper aims to characterize date-palm fiber-reinforced gypsum mortar, where different percentages of palm fibers were added by substituting with various percentages of gypsum weight. Untreated date palm fibers have been used after extraction process from date tree as (leaf, root, sheath, trunk…). Physical properties of fibers have been measured as volumetric density, coefficient of absorption and water content. Natural date palm fibers have been used without treatment. For mortar cured up to 28 days, its composition which report W/G = 0.6. The present work consists of studying the effect of gypsum mortar reinforcing with different types of date palm fibers, with different lengths (0.53-19 cm) and different percentages (0-6%) on compression behavior in the hardened state. Cubic specimens' compressive strength was (7x7x7 cm), are removed after 24 hours and then conserved in dry air at 28 days for mechanical testing. The mechanical property of composites such as compressive strength of natural fiber composite was reported and compare with the data for control mix. It has been seen form compression test that palm composite has never been higher compressive strength than the control mix.