Performance of concretes reinforced with recycled plastic fibres

This paper evaluates the performance of concretes reinforced with different fibre volume fractions (1-4%) of low-density polyethylene fibres, locally obtained from recycled plastic waste. Properties investigated included compressive and flexural strengths, and plastic shrinkage using a series of 150 mm cubes, 150 3 150 3 500 mm prisms, and 1000 3 1000 3 100 mm slabs respectively. The test results indicated a significant improvement in the flexural toughness and crack-arresting mechanism of the concretes reinforced with recycled plastic fibres compared to plain concrete. It can be observed that increasing the recycled fibre volume up to 3% caused up to 2.7 times increase in flexural toughness of the prisms, and no plastic shrinkage cracking of concrete slabs. Furthermore, test results indicated that there was a slight decrease in compressive and flexural strengths of concretes reinforced with different contents of recycled fibres compared to plain concrete. This study suggests that the addition of more than 2% of low-density polyethylene recycled plastic fibres (by volume) to concrete can be used effectively for controlling plastic shrinkage cracking of concrete structures, and thus results in waste reduction and resources conservation.