The effect of using polyethylene terephthalate particles on physical and strength-related properties of concrete; a laboratory evaluation

Engineering Properties of Concrete with Waste Recycled Plastic: A Review

“…They attributed such behavior to the source of plastics used in the study: it was obtained from industrial plastic floorboards or car bumpers and could have been harder than plastics used in other studies. Similar results were reported by Azhdarpour et al [53], who found an increased compressive strength for replacement levels up to 10% of PET plastics. They attributed this to the presence of plastic particles at the starting points of failure.…”

“…Yang et al [54] observed that moderate replacement of natural aggregates with waste recycled plastics could increase the flexural and splitting tensile strength of concrete (up to 15% and 20% replacement for splitting and flexural strength, respectively). Similar findings were reported by others [34,53,75]. Replacing more than 20% of natural aggregate with waste plastic particles, however, still led to a decrease in flexural and splitting tensile strength.…”

“…Similar to the findings on the compressive strength of concrete containing plastic, the elastic modulus of concrete reduced linearly as the percentages of plastic aggregates replacement increased in the mix [28,53]. The low elastic modulus of plastic is the main cause of the lower elastic modulus of concrete [26].…”

“…For example, Aguayo et al [62] studied how the replacement of aggregate with compliant inclusions (in their case, microcapsules containing phase change materials) influences the mechanical properties of concrete. Similar to Azhdarpour et al [53], they observed that at low substitution levels, the replacement of hard sand with soft inclusions led to an increase in the compressive strength. With the aid of numerical simulations, they attributed such behavior to stress redistribution between soft and hard inclusions (i.e., sand) at moderate replacement levels, which leads to stress transfer to strong (sand) inclusions and delays failure.…”

“…The same trend was found in lightweight self-compacting concrete, with some aggregate substituted with waste plastics ( Figure 6). The lower density of concrete with plastic aggregates can be explained by the lower specific gravity (range of 0.52 to 1.01) of waste plastic, as reported in [23,32,53].…”