Four students from Bannari Amman Institute of Technology, Sathyamangalam, had won third prize for their project on making low-cost structural reinforcing bar using an eco-friendly concrete mix, at the Fibre-Reinforced Polymer (FRP) Composites Student Competition held in the US recently.
The team comprising S. Govindan, G. Eniyachandramouli, T. Gowtham and K. Ranjith Selvan from the Department of Civil Engineering and Sustainable Civil Engineering Materials Laboratory, under the guidance of N.V. Manjunath, Assistant Professor, participated in the American Concrete Institute (ACI) - FRP event held at the Duke Energy Convention Centre, Cincinnati City, Ohio, from October 20 to 24.
Their project on “Eco-friendly Fibre Reinforcing Bars” won third place and the team were awarded a trophy and $250 prize money. Around 50 universities from countries across the world participated.
The team members said that iron TMT bars were one of the most important materials used widely in constructions.
Due to increase in demand for TMT bars, its price had gone up and the students designed structural fibre reinforcing bars using filaments of fibres held in a polymeric resin matrix binder. They designed a concrete mix using eco-friendly materials such as fly ash, silica fume and chemical admixtures such as super plasticisers.
