Engineering Commons^™

Chitosan-Based Shrinking Fibers For Post-Cure Stressing To Increase Durability Of Concrete, Diarmuid Gregory

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Concrete is a ubiquitous building material with an extensive history, yet it has a fair number of imperfections. Its sizeable environmental impact, low tensile to com- pressive strength ratio, and lack of durability leave room for innovation. Concrete durability frames the motivation for this research.This thesis presents the motivation, methods, and findings of tests performed to quantify the durability of concrete reinforced with automatically shrinking chitosan- based fibers. A literature review, the procedures for synthesizing chitosan fibers, and preliminary tests of the control fibers are all discussed. Two different types of durability tests were carried out: rapid freezing and thawing …