Study of Light Transmittance by using Optical Fibers

Rapid growth in population has led to dense building constructions with cement and concrete with large internal lightening requirement. To achieve energy efficiency, new and innovative materials are required for sustainable construction practices. This remains as a challenging task for engineers and other building professionals to design and promote low energy requirement buildings in a cost effective and environmentally responsive way. In the present work, light transmitting blocks of size 200mmx100mmx100mm were prepared by using plastic optical fibers. In this work, plastic optical fibers of 0.38mm diameter were used. Fibers are inserted in mortar bricks in order to investigate the light transmitting potential and also the strength parameter i.e., Compressive strength. From this, the optimum fiber percentage and optimum fiber number with location is determined and it can be used to observe the flexural crack behaviour pattern in various specimens such as prisms which is of standard size 50cmx10cmx10cm and also in beams of size 130cmx18cmx20cm with mesh, fiber alone and a combination of both mesh and fiber and has been compared with that of conventional concrete.