Shear behavior of RC beams made with plastic and steel wires: Experimental and numerical study

Plastic wires are commonly used in the production of electronic devices producing numerous plastic waste materials and hence recycling pvc waste is getting attention worldwide. The shear behaviour of RC beams made with steel and electric pvc plastic wire fibers is experimentally and numerically investigated in this research. It also studies the mechanical behaviour of concrete made with steel and pvc wire fibers. Different percentages of steel and electric pvc wire fibers are added separately to the concrete mix as 2.3 %, 4.5 % and 6.8 % of the total concrete volume. Eight RC beams are tested under two incremental static loads in order to examine their shear behaviour moreover 28 concrete cylinders are tested under compression and splitting tensile test. Test results have shown that a maximum increase of +47.44 % in the measured deformability occurs when the largest percentage of plastic wires are included in the concrete mix; however, this comes with a decrease of the shear capacity by 8.83 %. Instead, the measured maximum increase in the measured deformability when the largest percentage of steel wires is included in the concrete mix is +46.67 % that comes with an increase of the shear capacity by 67.83 %. Finite element models are also developed into ABAQUS to simulate the numerical behaviour of the specimens. The numerical and experimental behaviours are close.