Contribution of date-palm fibres reinforcement to mortar fracture toughness

The present paper aims to analyse the fracture behaviour of date-palm fibre-reinforced mortar. The vegetable fibres have been valorized over the last few years as a suitable reinforcement of cement-based matrixes used in non-structural applications. As a matter of fact, the desirable characteristics of such fibres (for instance, low environmental impact, biodegradability, low cost and density, and equitable stiffness and toughness) have led many designers to employ vegetable fibres in building composite materials. To the best knowledge of the authors, there are no studies in the literature related to the fracture behaviour of a cement-based mortar reinforced by a date-palm fibre mesh. In the present paper, the fracture behavior of a cement mortar reinforced by short fibres extracted from date-palm mesh is analysed. An experimental campaign is carried out on single edge-notched specimens, by examining five different values of fibre content. The experimental tests are performed under three-point bending loading and crack mouth opening displacement control. The Modified Two-Parameter Model proposed by the authors is herein adopted in order to compute the fracture toughness. Such a method is able to take into account the possible crack kinking occurring during the stable crack propagation, which is typical of quasi-brittle materials.