A viva exam was held for a master’s thesis entitled “Shearing behavior of deep continuous reinforced concrete beams containing plastic waste fibers and rehabilitated by polymeric carbon fiber strips”. The thesis was submitted by the student Sawsan Karim Kazim and under the supervision of Assistant Professor Dr. Laith Shaker Rashid Al-Qarawi and Assistant Professor Dr. Wajdi Shebr Sahib from the University of Kerbala for the degree of Masters in the Department of Civil Engineering at the College of Engineering at the University of Karbala,
The discussion committee consisted of the following gentlemen:
1_Professor Dr. Abbas Abdul Majeed Allawi_ President / University of Baghdad.
2_Professor Dr. Ali Hamid Nasser_ Member / University of Karbala.
3_ Assistant Professor Dr. Issam Muhammad Ali Beidi_ member / Al-Furat Al-Awsat Technical University_Karbala Technical Institute.
The study presented was part of the college’s mission to apply the concepts of sustainability in its applied studies, where the thesis aimed to verify the structural behavior regarding cutting deep continuous beams of reinforced concrete containing polyethylene terephthalate (PET). In fact, various reinforcing techniques have been proposed to strengthen the continuous deep beams of reinforced concrete partially damaged by Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP).
Several laboratory tests were performed for twelve concrete beams in addition to laboratory models to verify the effect of plastic fibers of different sizes from polyethylene fibers (0.5%, 1% and 1.5%) on the mechanical properties of concrete in addition to examining the structural behavior represented in the shear strength of the beams. Deep continuous RC incorporating PET fibers after being reinforced by CFRP at an angle (90° and 45°) the samples were loaded up to (60%) of their designed load and then reinforced with CFRP sheets and subsequently tested.
The results showed that the structural behavior of continuous deep bundles RC with PET fibers exhibited better performance and finer failure cracks than those without fibres. Moreover, the experimental results indicated that the models reinforced with CFRP plates exhibited a higher maximum loading capacity compared to the reference samples. Similarly, shear plasticity increased by (33.42%) and (45.83%) with increased fiber percentage up to (1%) for CFRP-reinforced beams at 90° and 45°, respectively.
The study also concluded that the surplus of plastic materials can be invested in the field of engineering work as an application of the concept of sustainability to avoid the negative impact of these surplus materials on humans and their lives in the future
