Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

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Materials Today: Proceedings

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Experimental investigation on using sheep wool as fiber reinforcement

in concrete giving increment in overall strength
Irfan Ahmad Wani a, Rouf ul Rehman Kumar b
a
Department of Civil Engineering, Sanskriti University, Mathura, Uttar Pradesh, India
b
J & K, Public Works Department

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Sheep wool is a natural fiber and it has the property of absorbing sound waves like fabrics. Sheep wool
Available online xxxx can also absorb moisture to a well extent. Sheep wool enhances overall strength of concrete such as
Compressive strength, Flexural strength & Split tensile strength. Having high strength, ductility, elasticity,
Keywords: sheep wool is widely needed now a days in construction areas. Since sheep wool hadn’t much importance
Sheep wool before but it has now been converted into a boon to construction industries.
Compressive strength Sheep wool has also shown insulation characteristics in concrete upto a great extent. In our research,
Split tensile strength
we assessed the properties of concrete after adding sheep fiber into it. Sheep wool being natural and
Flexural strength
Moisture absorption
available in a good range can reduce the cost of building materials by replacing costly admixtures which
Insulation were used to enhance the Engineering properties of concrete. The problem of high workability is also now
reduced since sheep wool fiber has good moisture absorption capacity. The elastic property of sheep wool
makes concrete safe from sudden failure and gives warning much before failure.
Ó 2020 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Second International Conference on Aspects of Materials Science and Engineering (ICAMSE 2021). This is
an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction
Concrete is a mixture of several construction materials including
cement/lime, sand/surkhi and coarse aggregates like gravels.water
is added to help in the release of heat of hydration and facilitate
the friction of particles. Being an old type of masonry, concrete
results in multi advantageous masonry on earth. Concrete possesses
various advantages over other types of materials used in
construction.
Fiber reinforced concrete is a normal concrete with the addition
of fiber reinforcement like steel fiber, carbon fiber, glass fiber,
polypropylene fiber etc. The fiber added in the concrete enhances
several characteristics of concrete as compression strength, tension
strength, crushing strength, toughness, abrasion resistance etc. The
widely used aspect ratio(AR) of fiber is between 30 and 150
(Table 1, Fig. 1).
1.1. Applications of wool fiber
Wool fiber being natural and widely available finds applications
in various fields of life which can be summarized as follows:
 Wool fiber finds its place in medical and bio-engineering fields
as it can be used an alternative in producing various composite
materials.
 It grabs its space in automotive industries.
 It occupies its space in sports equipment industries.
 It finds its use in aerospace industries.
 In textile industries, the wasted wool fibers lead to production
of wool keratin materials.
 Wool fiber finds its use in modern construction industries to
produce lightweight structures and eco friendly materials
(Table 2, Fig. 2).
1.2. Properties of wool fiber
 It has good abrasion Resistance.
 It has a standard elongation of 25–35% & 25–50% in wet
condition.
 Coarse fiber has High lusture than fine fiber.
 It is very absorbent & Its moisture regain capacity is
13–16%.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2020.11.938
2214-7853/Ó 2020 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Second International Conference on Aspects of Materials Science and Engineering (ICAMSE 2021).
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Please cite this article as: I. Ahmad Wani and R. ul Rehman Kumar, Experimental investigation on using sheep wool as fiber reinforcement in concrete
giving increment in overall strength, Materials Today: Proceedings, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2020.11.938
I. Ahmad Wani and R. ul Rehman Kumar Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

Table 1
Compressive strength values of various specimens of sheep wool fiber reinforced concrete.

Specimen No. Compressive Strength Compressive Strength Compressive Strength

after7 Days(N/mm2) after14 Days(N/mm2) after 28 Days (N/mm2)
SA 15 16 17
SB 17 19 22
SC 14 16 21
SD 14 17 21
SE 13 15 22
SF 13 16 19
SG 9 11 14

Fig. 1. Compressive strength values of sheep wool fiber reinforced concrete in chart form.

Table 2
Compressive strength values of various specimens of Normal concrete.

Specimen No. Compressive Strength Compressive Strength Compressive Strength

after7 Days(N/mm2) after14 Days (N/mm2) after 28 Days(N/mm2)
SA 10 10.1 12.8
SB 10.2 10.8 14.1
SC 10.1 10.1 14.2
SD 10.8 12.2 14.0
SE 09 10.6 12.5
SF 10.1 12 14.1
SG 10 12 14.2

Fig. 2. Compressive strength values of normal concrete in chart formon x-axis.

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I. Ahmad Wani and R. ul Rehman Kumar Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

Table 3
Split tensile strength values of sheep wool fiber reinforced concrete.

Specimen No. Split tensile Strength after7 Days(N/mm2) Split tensile Strength after14 Days(N/mm2) Split tensile Strength after 28 Days (N/mm2)
SA 2 2.1 2.4
SB 1 1.8 2.1
SC 1.7 1.8 2.1
SD 2.1 2.25 2.4
SE 2.1 2.2 2.55
SF 2.3 2.6 3.1
SG 1.4 1.6 2.7

Fig. 3. Split tensile strength values of sheep wool fiber reinforced concrete in chart form.

Table 4
Split tensile strength values of Normal concrete.

Specimen No. Split tensile Strength after7 Days(N/mm2) Split tensile Strength after14 Days (N/mm2) Split tensile Strength after 28 Days (N/mm2)
SA 1.7 1.8 2.3
SB 1.6 1.7 2.4
SC 1.7 1.8 2.1
SD 1.6 1.9 2.3
SE 1.7 1.8 2.2
SF 1.7 2.2 2.4
SG 1.7 1.9 2.4

Fig. 4. Split tensile strength values of Normal concrete in chart.

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I. Ahmad Wani and R. ul Rehman Kumar Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

Table 5
Flexural strength values of sheep wool fiber reinforced concrete.

Specimen No. Flexural Strength after7 Days (N/mm2) Flexural Strength after14 Days (N/mm2) Flexural Strength after 28 Days (N/mm2)
SA 2.8 3.9 4.8
SB 3.8 3.85 4.2
SC 4.1 4.2 4.8
SD 4.2 4.3 5.1
SE 4.5 4.8 5.5
SF 3.9 4.7 5.8
SG 3.4 3.9 4.1

After experimental investigation, it was found that an addition

1.3. Classification of sheep wool
a) Merino wool- Merino sheep originated in Spain. These fibers
have enough strength, fineness and elasticity.
b) Class two wool- Originated from England, Scotland, Ireland
and Wales.
c) Class three wool- Originated from United Kingdom and has
less elasticity and resiliency.
d) Class four wool- This type of wool has low desirable charac-
ters and is having very low elastic characters and strength.
2. Experimental tests on sheep wool fiber (SWF) reinforced
concrete & normal Concrete.
2.1. Compressive strength test
After experimental investigation, it was found that an addition
of sheep wool fiber results in a significant drop of compressive
strength. It was also observed that long curing periods lead to sig-
nificant reduction of compressive strength. Therefore strength
gaining capacity of sheep wool fiber reinforced concrete with cur-
ing period is less than normal concrete (Table 3, Fig. 3).
of sheep wool fiber results in a significant drop of compressive
strength. It was also observed that long curing periods lead to sig-
nificant reduction of compressive strength. Therefore strength
gaining capacity of sheep wool fiber reinforced concrete with cur-
ing period is less than normal concrete.
Note: The concrete grade used in this investigation is M15
(Table 4, Fig. 4).
2.2. Splitting tensile strength
Split tensile strength very much depends on compressive
strength. Initially, the addition of SWF decreases tensile strength
of concrete due to poor adhesion and low bond strength between
fibers and cement paste. But beyond 1%, tensile strength increases
since SWF concentrates. Unlike that of flexural strength, split ten-
sile strength is very much dependent on compressive strength val-
ues (Table 5, Fig. 5).
 The specimens used for split tensile test can be used for com-
pression test also.
 Since it is impossible to apply direct axial load on direct tensile
test, we go for split tensile test because of some eccentricity
which is always there.

Fig. 5. Flexural strength values of sheep wool fiber reinforced concrete in chart form.

Table 6
Flexural strength values of Normal concrete.

Specimen No. Flexural Strength after7 Days (N/mm2) Flexural Strength after14 Days (N/mm2) Flexural Strength after 28 Days (N/mm2)
SA 1.9 2.1 3.8
SB 2.3 2.7 4.1
SC 1.7 2.8 4.3
SD 2.0 3.4 4.2
SE 1.6 3.4 4.0
SF 2.1 3.2 4.4
SG 1.5 2.8 3.9

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I. Ahmad Wani and R. ul Rehman Kumar
Fig. 6. Flexural strength values of Normal concrete in chart form.
 This type of test gives very reliable results as compared to ring
tension test and double punch test.
 Split tensile strength = 0.7*fck
Splitting tensile strength = 2P/pDL
Where P = applied load
D = dia of specimen
L = specimen length
P = 0.7 fck* pDL/2
2.3. Flexural strength test
As per Test, the flexural strength of concrete gets improved con-
siderably by adding SWF up to a SWF percentage of 3% after which
it starts decreasing. The increased fiber quantity also enhances ten-
sile force capacity along soffit of specimen and reduces cracks
considerably.
 Flexure or bending is the distortion of a structure in a lateral
direction in the direction of application of load.
 Sheep wool when added in concrete up to a certain limit occu-
pies the space left between the particles of concrete and thus
makes it dense for load.
 The space if left open in concrete i.e the voids can make a signif-
icant reduction in density of concrete and thus bending can take
place easily.
 Flexural Strength, F = PL/bd2
Where P = Failure load, L = Effective span, B = width of beam
(Table 6, Fig. 6).
3. Conclusions
 Sheep wool fiber showed an approximate increase of 21.1% in
flexural strength, 28.7% increase of Split tensile strength &
12% increase of compressive strength.
 In this Experimental investigation, it was successfully tried to
use environment friendly concrete along with sheep wool
fiber.
 This research shows that thermal conductivity of concrete with
sheep wool fiber went satisfactory by making it insulated com-
pared to that of normal concrete without sheep wool fiber.
 Concrete having sheep wool fiber quantity less than 5% gave
smaller capillary absorption, better workability and other
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Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx
mechanical properties than concrete with more than 9% fiber
quantity.
 Being light weight and good performing, it can be used as false
ceiling tile as well as non load bearing wall partitions.
 Using sheep wool by dipping it in salt water as an admixture, It
can withstand more compressive and flexural strength as com-
pared to ordinary Portland cement concrete.
 Results coming out from these experiments conclude that the
use of sheep wool in concrete as a fiber reinforcement can elim-
inate greenhouse effect caused due to other reinforcements
since sheep wool is eco friendly.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Irfan Ahmad Wani: Methodology, Software, Formal analysis,
Investigation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing,
Visualization, Supervision. Rouf ul Rehman Kumar: Methodology,
Formal analysis, Funding acquisition.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
I express my sincere gratitude to my parents namely Ghulam
mohmad wani and Naseema Begum who supported me in this
entire work with full enthusiasm.
Further Reading
[1] ASTM International (2011), standard testing procedure for split tensile strength
of cylindrical specimens.
[2] S. Vantadori, Lightweight construction materials. Mortar reinforced with date
palm mesh fibers.
[3] E. Awwad, B. Hamad, M. Mabsout, H. Khatib, Sustainable construction material
using hemp fibers, 2010.
[4] A. Valenza, A. Nicolosi, Effect of sheep wool fibers on thermal insulation and
mechanical properties of cement matrix.
[5] D. Saravana Bavan, G.C. Mohan Kumar, Potential use of natural fiber composite
materials in India, J. Reinforced Plastics Compos. 29 (24) (2010) 3600–3613,
https://doi.org/10.1177/0731684410381151.
[6] M.S. Shetty, Concrete Technol. (2010).