Study of the Effect of Plastic Waste Fibers Incorporation on the Behavior of Self Compacting Concrete

Abstract

The use of waste and by-products has been for many decades for the manufacturing of building materials such as concrete and mortars. That responds simultaneously to reasons of economy of natural resources in aggregates (C&D waste) and the possibility of recovering industrial waste additions as replacement in composites. The present study focuses on the use of plastic waste fibers embedded in the cement matrix of self-compacting concrete SCC to improve its properties, either rheological mainly, the stability at fresh state or mechanical responses such as compressive and tensile strengths at hard state. This incorporation of plastic fiber reinforcement on the structure matrix could result an alternative SCC composite as a ductile material with enhanced properties. In this context, the self-compacting composites by adding a variable percentage of plastic fibers at 0.5, 1, 1.5% is formulated. Hence, the effect of plastic fibers waste on the rheological and mechanical properties of SCC is assessed. The obtained results in the present study let us to conclude the beneficial effect of such inclusion of plastic fibers on this new confected SCC fiber composition with acceptable rheological, physical and mechanical properties compared to those of a normal SCC concrete.