Impact Resistance and Sodium Sulphate Attack Testing of Concrete Incorporating Mixed Types of Recycled Plastic Waste

• Main Authors: Mahmoud Abu-Saleem, Yan Zhuge, Reza Hassanli, Mark Ellis, Md Mizanur Rahman, Peter Levett
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-08-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: mixed recycled plastic concrete; impact resistance; water transport properties; sodium sulphate attack; scanning electron microscope (SEM); energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDS)
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/17/9521

Impact resistance, water transport properties and sodium sulphate attack are important criteria to determine the performance of concrete incorporating mixed types of recycled plastic waste. Nine mixes were designed with different combinations of the three plastic types; Polyethylene terephthalate (PET), High density polyethylene (HDPE) and Polypropylene (PP). The plastic partially substituted the coarse aggregate (by volume) at various replacement ratios; 10%, 15%, 20% and 30%. The impact resistance and water transport properties were evaluated for nine mixes while sodium sulphate attack test was performed for three mixes. The results showed that the addition of mixed recycled plastic in concrete improved the impact resistance. The highest impact resistance improvement was achieved by R8 (PET + HDPE + PP) at 30% replacement which was 4.5 times better than the control mix. Water absorption results indicated a slight increase in all plastic mixes while contradictory results were observed for sorptivity test. Analysis of sodium sulphate attack results showed that incorporating 30% mixed plastic reduced the sodium sulphate resistance slightly due to the collective effect of plastic entrapping of sulphate ions after 80 cycles. This study has shown some positive results relating to the impact performance of Mixed Recycled Plastic Concrete (MRPC) which enhances its use in a sustainable way.