Mechanical Properties of Concrete Contained Recycled PVC Additives

Abstract

This research is studied the possibility of reusing PVC pipes wastes as partial replacement of sand within concrete mixture. In this study, the fine aggregate is replaced with PVC at dosages 1.25%, 2.5%, 3.75% and 5% by weight of sand with superplasticizer (SP) admixture. The mechanical properties are evaluated, which included compressive strength, splitting tensile strength, and flexural strength, in which for each one, 60 specimens are tested for water to cement ratios 0.41 and 0.53. Also, the effect of these wastes on the strengths and serviceability of concrete beams are investigated by testing three simply supported reinforced concrete beams of dimensions 150×200×1400 mm.  It is concluded that w/c ratio of 41% of the replacement of fine aggregates with 1.25% PVC particles showed the optimum results for compressive, tensile and flexural strengths, namely 31.66 %, 6.45%, and 31.23%, respectively, more than control mixture. The beam specimen that contain on 1.25% of PVC particles showed an increase in ultimate load by about 6.06% compared to the reference beam. While the hybrid cross section beam showed a relatively small reduction in ultimate load compared to reference beam, i.e, 14.5%. Thus with hybrid sections considerable amount of plastic wastes could be recycled with relatively small reduction in ultimate capacity of beams.