Effect of waste glass as powder and aggregate on strength and shrinkage of fiber reinforced foam concrete

Foam concrete can be considered as environmental friendly material due to its low weight, its minimal cost and a possibility to add waste materials in its production. This paper investigates the possibility of producing foam concrete with waste glass as powder and aggregate. Then, the effect of using waste glass on strength and drying shrinkage of foam concrete was examined. Also, the effect of incorporating polypropylene fibers (12 mm length and proportion of 0.5% of a mix volume) on distribution of waste glass as coarse particles within 1200 kg/m3 foam concrete mixes was evaluated. Waste glass was used as powder (20% of cement weight), as coarse particles (25%, 50% and 100% instead of sand volume) and as fine particles (25% instead of sand volume). From the results, the problem of non-uniform distribution of coarse glass particles was successfully solved by adding polypropylene fibers. It was found that using of waste glass as coarse aggregate led to reduce the strength of foam concrete mixes. However, using it with polypropylene fibers in combination helped in increasing the strength by about 29- 50% for compressive and 55- 71% for splitting tensile and reducing the drying shrinkage by about (31- 40%). In general, not only the fibers role but also the uniformly distributed coarse glass particles helped in improving and enhancing the strength and shrinkage of the investigated foam concrete mixes.