Abstract
Fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) composites have been used in various industries, thus a large amount of FRP wastes have been generated due to the out-of-service of FRP products. Recycling FRP wastes into coarse aggregates to replace natural coarse aggregates (NCA) to form the recycled FRP aggregate concrete (RFAC) is a potential approach to dispose of huge quantities of FRP wastes with low environmental impact. In this paper, waste glass FRP (GFRP) bars were cut into particles of 12 sizes to enable the grading of recycled FRP aggregate (RFA) as similar as possible to that of NAC. The influence of different RFA volume replacement ratios (0%, 30%, 50%, 70%, 100%) on the compressive performance of RFAC was investigated based on uniaxial compression tests of 15 standard cylinders. The results showed that the failure mode of RFAC was different from that of NAC. As the RFA replacement ratio increased, the compressive strength and elastic modulus of the RFAC gradually decreased, but its post-peak brittleness was significantly mitigated compared to NAC. The Poisson’s ratio of RFAC increased with the increase in the RGFA replacement ratio at the elastic stage and was smaller than that of NCA concrete. Both the existing stress–strain models developed for NAC and recycled aggregate concrete (RAC) were found not fit for the RFAC. Thus, a new stress–strain model that was applicable to RFAC was developed by modifying the classical existing model, and a good agreement between the model predictions and test data was reached.
Highlights
Being equipped with advantages such as lightweight, high strength and corrosion resistance, fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) has gained extensive application in various industries, including construction, shipbuilding, wind power industry and aerospace industry [1,2,3,4,5,6]
A much more significant lateral dilation was observed for all recycled FRP aggregate concrete (RFAC) specimens, and the extent of lateral dilation increased with increasing replacement ratios of recycled GFRP aggregates (RGFA)
The relatively regular shape and smooth surface of glass FRP (GFRP) particles resulted in a weak bond between the particles and the surrounding cement matrix [24], which triggered micro-cracks to develop between the GFRP particles and the matrix during loading (Figure 8)
Summary
Being equipped with advantages such as lightweight, high strength and corrosion resistance, fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) has gained extensive application in various industries, including construction, shipbuilding, wind power industry and aerospace industry [1,2,3,4,5,6]. The world market for continuous fiber-reinforced composite products reached USD 95 billion by 2020 [10] Such a rapid increase in FRP applications will be accompanied by a large amount of waste generated during production, in-service and at the end of service life. For recycling FRP as fine aggregates, some researchers found that the compressive strength of mortar or concrete decreases constantly with the increase of FRP replacement ratio [18,19,20,21,22,23]. The test results showed that the compressive strength and modulus of elasticity decreased with increasing RFA replacement ratio and that the failure mode of RFAC was different from that of natural aggregate concrete (NAC). To better understand the behavior of RFAC under compression, a new and accurate stress–strain model is developed
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