Evaluation of compressive and split tensile strength of slag based aluminosilicate geopolymer reinforced by waste polymeric materials using Taguchi method

Abstract

In this work, slag based aluminosilicate geopolymer was reinforced with polymeric fibers including, polyester (PES) (waste tire cap plies), polymeric particles including polyethylene terephthalate (PET) (waste water bottle), styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR) (waste tire), and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) (waste water hose). The tensile and compressive strength of the material was evaluated. Taguchi method was employed to assess the influence of the effective parameters on the mechanical characteristics of the geopolymer composite. QUALITEK-4 software was used to create the L32 orthogonal array with 192(96+96) geopolymer specimens and 32+32 experiments. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was utilized to analyze the results of the experiments. The prepared geopolymers were characterized by SEM analysis. The results revealed that the compressive and split tensile strength of the aluminosilicate geopolymer was substantially improved after reinforced by the PES fibers compared with other particles such as SBR, PVC, and PET.

Keywords

• geopolymer
• compressive strength
• split tensile strength
• Taguchi method
• polymeric reinforcement