Application of Recycled PET Fibers for Concrete Floors

Abstract

Abstract:\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0 High consumption of plastics leads to production of large amounts of plastic waste. Plastic is non-biodegradable so its disposal has been a problem. In order to resolve this problem, recycled PET fibers were proposed to be used as reinforcement in concrete. This paper has discussed the effect of adding Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) fiber to the blended cement mixed concrete floor slab panel. This research consists of two main stages. In first stage, different volumes of recycled PET fibers, i.e. 0%, 0.5%, 1.0% and 1.5% have been added as percentages of concrete by volume. The results showed that the maximum volume of PET fiber for a desired compressive and tensile strength was 1.0%. It was observed that 15.3 % of increase in compressive strength, 22.44% of increase in flexural strength and 18.77% of increase in split tensile strength for the addition of 1.0% PET fibers to the concrete. In second stage, optimum fiber percentage (1.0%) selected from the first stagewas used to produce slab panels. Inorder to investigate the structural performances of the slab panel, center-point line loading test, dropping weight test and energy absorption test were conducted. It has been found that recycled PET fiber introduced slab panels showed better performance compared to the conventional floor slab panel.