The Impact On Mechanical Properties of Different Geometric Shapes On recycled HDPE (rHDPE) Reinforcement in Concrete Structures

Abstract

This research was carried out to develop a reinforcing structure with different geometrical shapes and patterns from recycled HDPE motor oil containers to be embedded in concrete structures. The reinforcing structure was prepared by dimensioning, cutting and joining of waste HDPE. In this study, different basic engineering shapes of rHDPE were used to investigate the mechanical properties of produced concrete composites based on split tensile test. These reinforcement shapes consist of square tubing, round tubing, I beam, X-shaped beam, square perforated tubing, round perforated tubing, I-perforated beam, and X-shaped perforated beam were embedded parallel into the concrete structure. Based on the overall tensile strength, concrete with round tube (1.508 MPa), round perforated tube (1.323 MPa), X-beam (1.443 MPa), X-perforated beam (1.489 MPa) and square tube (1.641 MPa) had fulfilled the minimum required tensile strength of reinforced concrete. In comparison, the overall performance of the solid structure reinforced concrete increased 14.9% tensile strength when compared to the perforated structure reinforced concrete. It was seen that, concrete with square tubing (1.641 MPa) and round tubing (1.508 MPa) had the highest tensile strength among other reinforced concretes.