RC flooring system recycling plastic bottles: New innovative RC waffle slab

Abstract

A considerable percentage of plastic bottles (80%+) is not recycled and ends up in landfills; each may take up to 1000 years to decompose. Millions of plastic bottles are not recycled every day in the USA alone; the size of such dilemma is increasing every year. This paper aims to present a kick-off/proof of concept for the development of a new RC flooring system that incorporates plastic bottles. The bottles will reduce the RC slab weight and, of course, the proposed system will contribute to solving the persistent plastic bottle environmental problem. The structural system of the proposed bottled RC slab is presented and explained. This slab flooring system imitates the structural behavior of waffle and/or bubble slabs in some of its aspects. The system uses plastic bottles as a mold substituting the concrete; thus, recycling the plastic bottles which are not acting as a structural element. In this way, the proposed system is more cost-efficient than both waffle or bubble slabs, and it saves the environment from non-biodegraded plastic bottles. Two full-size slabs (2.0m × 2.0m) were casted and tested under monotonically increasing flexure load to failure to prove the concept. The experimental failure load was compared to what is expected from similar ribbed slabs and proved that the concept could efficiently be further improved and used as a flooring RC system. This research work is only the starting point in developing such a system that is expected to be structurally efficient, economically advantageous, and sentimentally friendly.