ABSTRACT
About 2 million tons of industrial and post-consumer carpet waste is disposed of each year in the United States. The waste could offer very attractive uses in the construction industry as an additive for fiber reinforced concrete (FRC). An experimental program demonstrated that recycled fibers from carpet industrial waste provide very effective reinforcement for concrete. Performance enhancement has been observed in compressive, flexural toughness, and drying shrinkage tests. FRC using recycled carpet waste fibers has also been successfully used in the construction project of a 11,000 m2 building, demonstrating that low-cost carpet waste fiber can be used in full scale construction projects. This paper reports on the experimental programs and compares the effectiveness of such waste fibers with that of conventional fibers for concrete reinforcement. It also discusses issues that need to be addressed for the application of such FRC in large scale construction projects and the benefits of using such FRC as a construction material, which include improved durability, reliability, and earthquake resistance.
