Experimental and Numerical Investigation of the Impact of Basalt Fibers and Tie Spacing on Short Concrete Column Behavior

This paper demonstrates the effect of adding basalt fibers into a concrete matrix and altering tie spacing on the behavior of short concrete columns since short columns are more robust than long ones and are primarily used in structures. Also, the impact of changing the reinforcement ratio on column behavior is numerically discovered. Three volume fractions of basalt fiber and three-tie spacing are adopted. The results illustrate that no-fiber columns sustain more than 50 % of the failure load before cracking, while this percentage raised to 75 % upon adding basalt fiber to concrete. 0.3 % of basalt fiber increases the compressive strength, cracking and ultimate column loads better than 0.6 %. Likewise, the impact of basalt fiber on the crack load is more pronounced than on the maximum load of the column. Basalt fiber columns exhibit lower longitudinal displacement than no-fiber ones at the cracking state. The shortening increases with increasing tie spacing, whereas decreasing tie spacing barely increases the ultimate load of the column. The numerical analysis provides close results to the experimental ones and shows that increasing the reinforcement ratio raises the column's load capacity. For the same tie spacing, increasing the reinforcement ratio raises the loading capacity of columns, and the longitudinal displacement barely increases upon increasing spacing. Generally, basalt fibers delay cracking and improve the column loading capacity.