The Use of Plastic in Sidewalk Bricks and As A Filler in Concrete.

• Hengyu Li
• Ramez Aladdin
• Fabian Carlos Acevedo
• Tonghao Zhang
• Francisco Lopez

Plastic pollution is one of the biggest environmental problems that the world is currently facing. As our world population continues to increase, the usage of plastic will also increase since it’s the preferred packaging material for many products all around the world. The team’s goal is to make use of this waste product and turn it into a useful source of material for improving particular current cement products. The objective is to replace cement which already has a large carbon footprint in concrete with plastic for small concrete objects like bricks and others. The use of plastic in concrete aims at both using a waste product and improving the current product that it will replace. As mentioned in the article Fiber-reinforced plastic reinforcement for concrete structure by David Hensher’s, it is stated that to a certain extent the use of plastic in concrete can help improve current limitations of concrete like tensile strength and crack control. By using plastic in concrete mixtures an expected improvement in the performance of concrete structures will be confirmed through testing with the aid of special equipment that is used to test concrete properties. The main results that will be compared in order to determine if the plastic mixture is superior to the current standards through a compressive strength, tensile strength, splitting strength, unit weight, waterproofing capabilities, and cost of production tests. The results will determine in which situations or structures, a plastic concrete mixtures will yield a better optimization for overall performance and cost. The group’s overall goal would be to create a superior product and reduce pollution at the same time.