The Mechanical Properties of PET Fiber Reinforced Concrete from Recycled Bottle Wastes

Abstract

This research is carried out to investigate the performance of concrete containing Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) bottle waste as fiber. PET bottle waste was chosen because it is being thrown after single use and cause environmental problem. One way to recycle wasted PET bottles is grinded into irregular fiber. Then, it was incorporate with the concrete and test the performance of the concrete. The study was conducted using cylindrical mold of concrete to investigate the performance of the concrete in term of mechanical properties. A total of four batches of concrete were produced namely, normal concrete and concrete containing PET fiber of 0.5%, 1.0% and 1.5% fraction volume. In this research, the mechanical properties that were measured are compressive strength, splitting tensile strength and modulus of elasticity (MOE) following British Standard method. The results revealed that the presence of PET fiber in concrete will increase the concrete performance. Nevertheless, the content of PET fiber was specified in a specific limit to avoid effect of concrete strength.