Sifatullah Bahij, Safiullah Omary, Vincent Steiner, Francoise Feugeas, Amanullah Faqiri
Abstract: The annual consumption of plastics has been increasing gradually and resulting in a huge amount of plastic waste. The inappropriate disposal of plastic causes many environmental problems due to the shortage of space for landfilling and low biodegradability. Therefore, one possible solution is to recycle and reuse plastic wastes in the construction industry. The objective of this research is to investigate the possibility of evolon ® non-woven plastic textile for strengthening concrete specimens. Hence, an experiment was carried out to investigate certain properties of the ordinary concrete strengthened by the layers of non-woven plastic tissue. For this purpose, concrete specimens with five various configurations; no sheets (Ref), one layer at the bottom (1-Layer), samples strengthened at two vertical sides (2-Sides), sheets at the bottom and two vertical sides (3-Sides), and full wrapping (4-Sides) were cast and tested. The cubical and cylindrical compressive strengths, flexural strength, and split tensile strength tests were measured after 7, 14, and 28 days of curing, while ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV) and thermal conductivity values were calculated only after 28 days of curing. The findings clearly demonstrate that the mechanical properties of strengthened samples (compressive, flexural, and split tensile strengths) were improved significantly compared to the control ones at each curing regime. Moreover, it was obtained that the attachment of non-woven sheets alters the failure mechanism from very brittle to much ductile. Besides, non-woven sheets had the capacity to maintain the samples from deterioration into many portions as was observed for reference samples after mechanical testing. Finally, the attachment of such sheets resulted in the reduction of UPV and thermal conductivity of concrete samples compared to the control ones. Therefore, non-woven fabrics are recommended to improve certain properties of concrete.
Keywords: Evolon ® non-woven sheets, Mechanical properties, Failure mechanism, Ultrasonic pulse velocity, Thermal conductivity
Date Published: June 23, 2021 DOI: 10.11159/ijci.2021.016
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