Performance of plastic wastes in fiber-reinforced concrete beams

Synthetic plastics are typically discarded, thus causing environmental pollution. Plastic wastes are recycled as fiber in concrete to solve this problem. In this study, synthetic fibers in a concrete matrix were investigated through compressive strength, splitting tensile, fracture energy, and flexural beam tests. The results show that an increase in fiber content improves the tensile strength of the concrete matrix. A high fiber content results in a substantial amount of fibers crossing a fractured section, thereby activating failure resistance mechanisms. Ring-shaped fibers, which are mainly designed to activate fiber yielding instead of fiber pullout, are better than irregularly shaped polyethylene terephthalate and waste wire fibers. Incorporating plastic fibers into concrete does not significantly change the failure mode of reinforced concrete beams compared to that of normal concrete beams. However, the first crack load presented improved results. The reinforced concrete containing ring-shaped plastic fibers with a width of 10 mm (RPET-10) exhibited remarkable results during the first crack load with an increment of 32.3%. It can be concluded that ring-shaped PET waste produces fiber concrete with a performance comparable to that of commercial synthetic fibers.