According to EIA report, the total CO2 emission related to lighting was approximately 7% of the total global CO2 emission in 2005. The production of electricity contributes to the increase in the greenhouse gas emissions. The electric lighting demand has constantly been increasing with the increase in the population, urbanization and construction of high-rise buildings. Artificial lighting consumes around 19% of the total delivered electricity, worldwide. The building sector energy demand accounts approximately 34% of the worlds energy demand. Optical fibers are a sensing or transmission element, so decrease the use of artificial light, the normal concrete is replaced by translucent concrete, which has natural lighting and art design.Įnergy conservation is a key and emerging global issue for sustainable infrastructure development. The use of sunlight source of light instead of using electrical energy is main purpose of translucent concrete, so as to reduce the load on non- renewable sources and result it into the energy saving. Translucent concrete allows more light and less weight compared to normal concrete. Translucent concrete (Transparent concrete) is new technique different from normal concrete. Due to globalization and construction of high-rise building, the space between buildings is reduced this causes to increasing the use of non- renewable energy sources, so therefore there is a need of smart construction technique like green building and indoor thermal system. Therefore, it is imperative to develop a new functional material to satisfy the structure in terms of safety monitoring (such as damage detection, fire warning), environmental protection and energy saving and artistic modeling. At present, green structures focus greatly on saving energy with indoor thermal systems. It is the combination of optical fibers and fine concrete. The transparent concrete mainly focuses on transparency and its objective of application pertains to green technology and artistic finish. Was successfully produced by mixing large amount of glass fiber into concrete in 2003, named as LiTraCon. In 2001, the concept of transparent concrete was first put forward by Hungarian architect Aron Losonzi at the Technical University of Budapest, and the first transparent concrete block Concrete has learned to adapt to almost all new challenges that appeared. It is no longer the heavy, cold and grey material of the past it has become beautiful and lively.īy research and innovation, newly developed concrete has been created which is more resistant, lighter, white or colored, etc. But since that time, concrete has made considerable progress, not only in technical terms, but also in aesthetic terms. Just a few decades ago concrete was often misunderstood, disliked and captured by its image fixed due to the rapid urbanization of the 1960s. Three ingredients make up the dry mix: coarse aggregate, consisting of larger pieces of material like stones or gravel fine aggregate, made up of smaller particles such as sand and cement, a very fine powder material that binds the mix together when water is added.

The principal objective of this project is to design translucent concrete blocks with the use of optic fiber strands and then analyze their various properties and characteristics.Īll tests further performed on the translucent concrete samples are done to ascertain the improvements of the casted blocks over normal concrete blocks of the same size and with the same design ratios, and to ascertain practical utility of using translucent concrete as a building material.Ĭoncrete has been used since Roman times for the development of infrastructure and housing, but its basic components have remained the same. In this project, we will check and perform tests on compressive strength and light transmittance property of translucent concrete.

Main aim of the study is to design translucent concrete blocks with the use of optical fiber strands with mortar & cement and then analyze their various physical & engineering properties with respect to conventional concrete blocks by adding optical fibers of 3 % 4 % and 5%. Light is transmitted from one surface of the wall to the other due to the presence of optical fibers along the overall width of the wall which allows light to pass through.Īn optical glass fiber strand is a flexible, transparent fiber made of silica or plastic, slightly thicker than a human hair & can function as waveguide, or 'light pipe' to transmit light between the two ends. Patil Institute of Technology, Pimpri, Pune-411018Ībstract Transparent concrete is the new type of concrete introduced in modern era which carries special property of light transmitting due to presence of optical fiber strands & is also known as translucent concrete or light transmitting concrete. Translucent Concrete by using Fibre Optic StrandsĪbdul Rahman1, Mateen Rashid2, Mohamed Mansoor3ĭr.