Preliminary Analysis of the Use of Construction Waste to Replace Conventional Aggregates in Concrete

This work aims to study the influence of using construction and demolition waste in the replacement of coarse and fine aggregate to produce recycled aggregate concrete (RAC). A moderate compressive strength concrete made with usual fine and coarse aggregate was used as a benchmark material. Compressive and split tensile tests were performed using 120 cylindrical concrete specimens with 150 mm diameter and 300 mm length. Four-point flexural tests in reinforced beams made with conventional concrete and RAC were performed. The results obtained showed that the use of recycled fine aggregates, in both percentages of substitution investigated—50% and 100%— did not generate any deleterious influence on the values of compressive strength and split tensile strength of the RACs produced. Tin fact, the mechanical strengths of RACs produced with recycled fine aggregate were equal or higher than those from the reference concrete. The same behavior was not observed, however, when the recycled coarse aggregate was used. For this case, decreases in concrete mechanical strengths were observed, especially in compressive strength, with values around 35% lower when compared to the reference concrete. Tensile mechanical tests results confirmed the excellent behavior of all RACs made with replacement of usual fine aggregates by recycled. Bending tests performed in reinforced RAC beams had as objective to evaluate the deformation profile of the beams. The obtained results showed that RAC beams with full replacement of usual fine aggregate by the recycled aggregates have presented little changes in the global behavior, an aspect that encourages its use.

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