Recycling of PET bottles as fine aggregate in concrete.
An attempt to substitute in concrete the 5% by weight of fine aggregate (natural sand) with an equal weight of PET aggregates manufactured from the waste un-washed PET bottles (WPET), is presented. The WPET particles possessed a granulometry similar to that of the substituted sand. Specimens with different cement content and water/cement ratio were manufactured. Rheological characterization on fresh concrete and mechanical tests at the ages of 28 and 365days were performed on the WPET/concretes as well as on reference concretes containing only natural fine aggregate in order to investigate the influence of the substitution of WPET to the fine aggregate in concrete. It was found that the WPET concretes display similar workability characteristics, compressive strength and splitting tensile strength slightly lower that the reference concrete and a moderately higher ductility.
Frigione
Mariaenrica
M
Department of Engineering for Innovation, University of Salento, Via per Monteroni, 73100 Lecce, Italy. mariaenrica.frigione@unisalento.it
D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D006794:Household Articles; D011093:Polyethylene Terephthalates; D012822:Silicon Dioxide; D013718:Tensile Strength
D011093:Polyethylene Terephthalates; D012822:Silicon Dioxide