STUDY OF NATURAL FIBERS AS AN ADMIXTURE FOR CONCRETE MIX DESIGN INTRODUCTION The usage of concrete is very wide.

It is one of the important construction materials. It is comparatively economical, easy to make, offers continuity and solidity and indeed, it plays the role of developing and improving our modern society. Here in the Philippines, there are also lots of researchers who are continuously studying and researching in order to develop the technology of concrete. Philippines is abundant of natural resources, resources coming from water and land. It has become the livelihood of many filipinos. There are millions of hectares of plantations of different woods, plants and vegetables, like sugarcane, pineapple, abaca, cotton, coconut and many more. Unfortunately, these livelihoods also contribute to the increasing volume of wastes generated every year. Since Philippines are one of the countries who widely used concrete in construction, these residues may turn into something useful. Concrete is a brittle material, it is high in compression strenght but less in tensile strenght and the tendency of the concrete is to crack. The residues generated from woods and plants are composed of natural fibers. These fibers can be added to enhance the concretes workability.

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY Concrete is relatively brittle material, steel reinforcement has been used to overcome this problem. Steel reinforcement is assumed to carry all tensile loads. But the problem with employing the steel in concrete is that overtime steel corrodes due to the ingress of chloride ions and/or carbonation. Although some measures are available to reduce corrosion of steel in concrete such as corrosion inhibitive admixtures and coatings, a better and permanent solution may be to replace the steel with a reinforcement that is less environmentally sensitive. In different countries, they were studying of the different natural fibers available in their country to incorporate in the concrete mixture. However, naturally occuring fibers may not replace the steel and other fibers as reinforcement, but it can be added into the concrete mixture to increace the toughness, or ability to resist crack growth.

This research is intended to answer the following questions: 1. What are the differences in terms of strenght in palin concrete and concrete containing natural fibers? 2. Does the concrete containing natural fiber can reduce or prevent cracking?

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 1. This study will provide knowledge or records that can be useful in the development and innovation of new technology in the future field of Civil Engineering. 2. This will provide necessary information that students of Civil Engineering can be used in their future research. This will also encourage others to study other alternative materials that can be used in construction. 3. To the government agencies that they may utilize different source of admixtures in their infrastructures mainly in their concrete buildings, highways and bridges. 4. To the businessmen and entrepreneurs that they may use this research to the construction industry. 5. To the local government units that may generate livelihood and more jobs since this research needs to extract the natural fibers manually.