[Ferro List] Basalt Fiber, PVA, others and concrete mix designs

[Richard McCabe]

I have heard good things about Basalt fibers.  No personal  
experience.  But I can assure you that Dyneema/Spectra (UHWHPE) is  
like 40 times the price.  All the production capacity that I know  
about goes to make body armor. (Thanks, shrub.)

For ductility, only Dyneema/Spectra outperforms PVA.  But it comes at  
a severe premium.  Everything depends on your application.  A  
sponsored canoe is not the same as a building. I have worked with  
hundreds of clients over the last five years.  I have dozens of  
proprietary mix designs.  I work with all fiber types now.  All  
concrete types. I have magnificent American and European engineers/ 
professors on my team now.

Richard


On Dec 30, 2007, at 9:48 PM, Lyle Gordon wrote:

> Chris,
>
> I have used basalt fiber (6 and and 12mm length) which I got from a
> company near Moscow called Kamenny Vek, http://www.basfiber.com/.
>
> The outperformed fiber glass, stronger and stiffer however and they
> performed well for for our project (a canoe) but we ended up switching
> to Dyneema (ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene from Toyobo in
> Japan) as we found it dispersed better in lightweight concrete and it
> has a lower density (important when making a boat).