Mechanical and thermal performance of concrete and mortar cellular materials containing plastic waste

• Waste plastics were used to produce concrete and mortar plastic compounds.
• Parameters as density, porosity, and water absorption were studied.
• Mechanical properties of mortar and concrete plastic compounds were measured.
• The studied materials showed an important decrease in thermal conductivity.

In this paper the improvement of thermal insulation behavior of concrete and mortar plastic compounds is presented. The materials studied were obtained by adding to mortar and concrete five different percentages of two types of plastic waste (polyethylene and PVC residues coming out of electric cable protective sheath). Parameters as density, porosity, water absorption and carbonation behavior were studied. The time evolution of mechanical properties (compression and flexural) were characterized to finally study and model the thermal conductivity, that is shown, in all studied cases, to have higher decrease than the expected.