Use of waste window glass as substitute of natural sand in concrete production

Abstract

Nowadays, the use of various waste and recycled materials and by-products is very common in construction. Several recycled materials are used in concrete in different ways and for various purposes. Basically, embedding any waste materials in concrete has two major objectives: reducing the environmental impact of concrete industry and eventually, enhancing some properties of the produced concrete. Glass is a non-biodegradable material and if not recovered and properly recycled, could negatively affect the environment. Cement-based materials offer an opportunity to valorize this type of waste materials in concrete when properly designed. Waste glass from window applications was collected from local workshop, screened and crushed into fine aggregate to be used as a sand substitute in concrete. This research aims to investigate the effect of using this recycled glass as fine aggregate replacement in concrete both at fresh and hardened states. Natural sand was replaced at 10%, 20% and 30% with the crushed window waste glass. Compressive strength of the designed glass-concrete was examined at 1, 3, 7 and 28 days while flexural and splitting tensile strengths were examined at 28 days of wet curing.