Performance Optimization of Recycled Polymeric Reinforced Concrete Under Compressive Loads

Waste tyre is one of the most notable environmental nuisances the world has to contend with today due to its non- biodegradability in nature. The traditional indiscriminate methods employed in disposing these waste materials constitute serious environmental hazards and is severely threatening our health, safety and environment. Therefore, recycling these waste tyres into construction materials serve as a suitable means to properly disposed of this vast amount of used rubber tyres. This work therefore presents a comprehensive review of the engineering properties of recycled waste rubber tyres. used for reinforced composite concrete production in civil infrastructural works. The experimental research method was adopted in this study, where composite concrete of grade 25 in a nominal mix of 1:2:4 with varying proportions of the polymeric chips as partial replacement to coarse aggregates, ranging from 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 30%, up to 60% were used to produce concrete cubes of 150 x 150 x 150mm as specimens and subjected to slump test, and compressive strength test, in order to determine the workability, strength and structural integrity of the concrete. The result of this experiment showed that replacing 5% of natural aggregates with polymeric material in concrete production improved its compressive strength by 3.1%, at 7 days curing and 3.5%. at 28days curing. But with further increment of the polymeric material to 10%, 20% and above, the compressive strength reduced drastically below the minimum permissible levels. It is hereby recommended that to produce a sound composite lightweight concrete with improved compressive strength for structural stability, a moderate percentage, precisely less than 10% of this polymeric material should be used as partial replacement.