The Use of Textile Waste for Fibre-Reinforced Geopolymer Composite Production

Various synthetic and natural materials are applicable as fibre-reinforcement in both cementitious mixtures and geopolymers, such as steel, different polymeric, basalt, hemp, cotton, sisal fibres, etc. During the experiments, textile wastes made from various raw materials were processed and added to a fly ash-based geopolymer mixture as fibre reinforcement. Two-step comminution was applied to the textiles using a rotary shear shredder and a vertical cutting mill with Ø10 mm bottom sieve to produce fibres. The flexural strength values increased with the fibre addition, with over 100% after the addition of 5 m/m% textile fibres. In case of the uniaxial compressive strength, the values decreased compared to the original geopolymer mixture – without fibres. The number of microcracks decreased when fibres were added to the geopolymer matrix and the geopolymer could form a coating layer on the fibres.