Insulated Concrete Blocks Using Plastic Waste and Steel Fibers

Abstract

Plastic is used in abundance due to its various beneficial properties.All forms of consumed plastic become waste and require large areas of land for storage.The low biodegradability of plastic and its presence in large quantity negatively affects the environment.Researchers have developed numerous techniques to recycle plastic.However, each technique has its own demerits.Such as use of solid plastic waste as aggregates in concrete, affects the concrete mechanical properties.Therefore, the objective of this research work is to regain concrete strength by using steel fibers in combination with PET plastic aggregates and investigate its effect on mechanical and thermal insulation properties of concrete.Different specimen were tested for compressive and tensile strength to find out the effect of plastic aggregates incorporation as fine aggregates replacement on strength of concrete.There was noticeable decrease in the compressive and split tensile strength of concrete at 20% replacement of sand by PET plastic aggregates.Steel fibers were also added to the concrete mixes which increase the strength of concrete mixes.After getting satisfactory results of mechanical properties, finally specimen were tested for thermal insulation properties.Results showed that thermal conductivity of samples decrease considerably with addition of plastic aggregates and it leads to good insulation properties of concrete.