Testing the capacity of polyethylene mesh as strengthening aggregate for concrete

Abstract

Plastic is commonly known as the non-biodegradable material that is widely used in different products. Plastics can be used in various ways; in fact, it is widely utilized in the field of construction and engineering consuming 9.6 million tons of plastic last 2014 (PlasticsEurope, 2016). In this paper, the researchers focused on the different effects of plastic materials on the strength of concrete. Numerous studies showed different results of the compressive strength of plastic. Safinia and Alkalbani (2016) reported that using recycle plastic bottles as additives can increase the compressive strength by 57%. However, Jibrael and Peter (2016) argued that using waste plastic bottles reduces the compressive, tensile, and flexural strength of concrete. This research further investigated the gap in the existing literature by testing the capacity of plastic — polyethylene mesh as strengthening aggregate for concrete. The research is composed of two separate experiments: the first experiment tested the compressive strength of concrete with polyethylene mesh aggregate, and the second experiment showed the diminishing effects on the compressive strength of polyethylene mesh aggregate concrete. Both experiments were tested in three trials per set-up using the hydraulic press as the tool to measure compressive strength in metric tons. The concrete mixture was made with mixing water, cement, and sand with 2:3 ratio between cement and sand consisting 400 mL of cement, and 600 mL of sand. The first experiment focused on comparing the compressive strength between the standard concrete and the polyethylene mesh concrete. The hypothesis: “If two sheets of polyethylene mesh is added to the concrete, then that concrete will have the highest compressive strength.” The hypothesis was tested through an experimentation and a statistical test (F-Test). The experiment had a total of 9 samples with three setups: the first set-up had no polyethylene mesh added; which is also serves as the control set-up, the second set-up had one sheet of polyethylene mesh and the third set-up had two sheets of polyethylene mesh. A small metal bar was used together with the piston of the hydraulic press in the first experiment. This may be a factor that possibly made a difference between the results of the first and the second experiment. The statistical result showed a p — value of 0.0004 and an F — score of 39.335 which was larger than the alpha value of 0.05 which means there was statistical difference between the 3 set — ups. The results showed that the set-up with the 2 sheets of polyethylene mesh has the highest compressive strength among all the set-ups, proving the researchers' hypothesis correct.