Water tank reinforced with textile fibres and geotextile: Fid-Bau Portal

Water tank reinforced with textile fibres and geotextile

Arvind Rao, H.S. / Badwane, Ashish / Pakhale, Harshali / Sadavarte, Mayuri / Joshi, Vinay / Kulkarni, Upendra

Fibre reinforced composites offer low specific gravities and a combination of strength and modulus that is either comparable to or better than that of traditional metallic materials. In the present study two natural fibres (flax and coir) were used as reinforcement, whereas for plastering purpose a mixture of cement, sand and water was used. From these composite materials water tanks were prepared as per the following specifications: length 2 m, width 2 m, depth 1 m, slope 1:1, volume 12 m³, capacity 12,000 litres. The fibres were laid down manually with required gram per square meter (flax 600-700, coir 300-350, geotextile 300 g/m²). Cement slurry was applied for soaking the fibres to fill up the pores and then cement mortar (cement to sand ratio 1:4) was applied uniformly. Curing was done for 8 days. Pan Evaporimeter was used to find out daily evaporation from the individual tanks for measuring evaporation rate which was subtracted from the other tank readings to get percolation rates per day (percolation rate = actual reading of tank - Pan Evaporimeter value). It has been calculated that the cost/liter is lowest for nontextile material tank (cement only) and increases in order of coir tank followed by flax tank and geotextile. As per observations of the project it is concluded that natural tank cost/liter is 20% of a synthetic tank. Percolation rate is lowest in flax tank followed by coir tank followed by geotextile and considering cost/liter coir is lowest followed by flax and then geotextile.