Energy Absorption Characteristics of PVC Coarse Aggregate Concrete under Impact Load

In this paper, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) coarse aggregate with different mixing contents is used to solve the problems of plastic pollution, low energy absorption capacity and poor damage integrity, which provides an important reference for PVC plastic concrete used in the initial support structures of highway tunnels and coal mine roadway. At the same time, the energy absorption characteristics and their relationship under different impact loads are studied, which provides an important reference for predicting the energy absorption characteristics of concrete under other PVC aggregate content or higher impact speed. This study replaced natural coarse aggregate in concrete with different contents and equal volume of well-graded flaky PVC particles obtained by crushing PVC soft board. Also, slump, compression, and splitting strength tests, a free falling low-speed impact test of steel balls and a high-speed impact compression test of split Hopkinson pressure bar (SHPB) were carried out. Results demonstrate that the static and dynamic compressive strength decreases substantially, and the elastic modulus and slump decrease slowly with the increase of the mixing amount of PVC aggregate (0–30%). However, the energy absorption rate under low-speed impact and the specific energy absorption per MPa under high-speed impact increase obviously, indicating that the energy absorption capacity is significantly enhanced. Regardless of the mixing amount of PVC aggregate, greater strain rate can significantly enhance the dynamic compressive strength and the specific energy absorption per MPa. After the uniaxial compression test or the SHPB impact test, the relative integrity of the specimen is positively correlated with the mixing amount of PVC aggregate. In addition, the specimens are seriously damaged with the increase of the impact strain rate. When the PVC aggregate content is 20%, the compressive strength and splitting strength of concrete are 33.8 MPa and 3.26 MPa, respectively, the slump is 165 mm, the energy absorption rate under low-speed impact is 89.5%, the dynamic compressive strength under 0.65 Mpa impact air pressure is 58.77 mpa, and the specific energy absorption value per MPa is 13.33, which meets the requirements of shotcrete used in tunnel, roadway support and other impact loads. There is a linear relationship between the energy absorption characteristics under low-speed impact and high-speed impact. The greater the impact pressure, the larger the slope of the fitting straight line. The slope and intercept of the fitting line also show a good linear relationship with the increase of impact pressure. The conclusions can be used to predict the energy absorption characteristics under different PVC aggregate content or higher-speed impact pressure, which can provide important reference for safer, more economical, and environmental protection engineering structure design.