Mechanical Properties of Fly Ash-Based Geopolymer with Natural Fiber

Geopolymer concrete is an eco-friendly concrete that can reduce carbon emissions on the earth's surface because it uses industrial waste materials such as fly ash, rice husk ash, bagasse ash, and palm oil fuel. The development of fly ash as a cement replacement material is now widely used, especially on geopolymer concrete. In this study the natural fiber used is pineapple fiber. Pineapple fiber is an alternative use of natural fibers in geopolymer mortar composites. This research performed compressive strength test and flexural strength test with variations of pineapple fiber length 10 mm, 20 mm, and 30 mm with percentage of fiber used 0%, 0.25% and 0.50% of mortar weight. The mortar geopolymer is made from 100% fly ash. The concentration of NaOH solution used was 14 M and 16 M. The study revealed that the fiber length of 30 mm at a percentage of 0.50% fiber at the concentration of NaOH 16 M results a compressive strength of 41.468 MPa and the largest flexural strength of 9.209 MPa.