Influence of Carbon Fiber Incorporation on Electrical Conductivity of Cement Composites

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of carbon fiber (CF) length, electrode spacing, and probe configuration on the electrical conductivity of cement composites. Accordingly, 57 different types of samples were prepared, considering three different CF lengths, five different CF contents, three different electrode spacings, and two different probe configurations. This research found that the influence of CF length on the electrical resistivity of cement composite depends electrode spacing. For the cement composite with wide electrode spacing of 40 mm, its resistivity decreased as increasing CF length as in the previous study. However, when the electrode spacing is 10 mm, which is narrow (10 mm), the resistivity of the cement composite rather increased with increasing CF length. The results implied that when an electrode is designed for the cement composite incorporating CF, the CF length should be short compared to the electrode spacing. The percolation threshold of CF measured by the two-probe configuration was 2% or more. This is higher than that measured by the four-probe configuration (1%). At a lower CF content than 2%, the two-probe configuration gave higher resistivity of the cement composite than the four-probe configuration. However, the difference coming from the different probe configurations was marginal as increasing the CF content.