Experimental Study on Recycled Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) Bottle Fibre Reinforced Concrete

Abstract

Plastic waste is one of the major environmental concerns. Eight million to 12.7 million tonnes are dumped into the sea (https://www.sas.org.uk/our-work/plastic-pollution/plastic-pollution-facts-figures/). If plastic wastes are thrown in the land, it makes the soil less fertile and it also pollutes water and harms sea life. Plain concrete has a limited ductility and resistance to cracking (https://theconstructor.org/concrete/). The addition of fibres can improve the properties of concrete. These fibres are uniformly dispersed into the concrete mix which increases its structural integrity. This type of concrete is known as fibre reinforced concrete. This can be natural, animal fibres or polymers. Incorporating plastic into concrete is one possible environmentally friendly approach for their safe disposal. Polyethylene terephthalate is one of the most important and extensively used plastics in the world. PET (polyethylene terephthalate) is a form of polyester that is extracted or moulded into plastic bottles and containers (https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/immersive-story/2018/09/20/what-a-waste-an-updated-look-into-the-future-of-solid-waste-management). PET as fibre reinforcement in structural concrete can provide crack control and ductility enhancement for concrete (Kim et al., 2010). In recent years, a lot of experimental studies were carried out on using waste plastic bottles. The use of PET bottle fibres has a positive effect on the properties of the concrete (Subramani and Fizoor Rahman, 2017). PET-fibres as the partial replacement of aggregate in the Portland cement aggregate concrete. It shows an increase in compression and tensile strength (Ramadevi and Manju, 2012). Akcaozoglu et al. (2010) shredded waste PET bottles granules and used it as a lightweight aggregate in mortar. It was concluded that the use of shredded waste PET granules as aggregate resulted in the production of structural lightweight concrete. The PET-fibres increase the durability of concrete and it can be used to improve the ductility of the concrete (Foti, 2011). Long term durability performance of recycled PET-fibre reinforced cement composite can be achieved (Won et al., 2010). In this study, the effect of different sizes of PET fibres on concrete was evaluated. These PET fibres are produced from PET bottles. Also, the study of strength and failure mode of PET-fibres reinforced concrete is performed.