Performance of plain concrete beam retrofitted with textile waste composite

The increasing numbers of textile waste in Malaysia are alarming when in 2018 approximately 195300 tonnes of textile waste were dumped and occupied about 6.3% and this was double in 2012 (2.8%). Textiles made of synthetic fibers such as nylon, lycra, polyvinyl chloride, polyurethane, and spandex could be detrimental to the environment and take up to 200 years to decompose in landfills. The tensile strength of the textile could achieve up to 800 MPa and potentially be used as retrofitting materials. This study aims to utilize textile waste as one of the structural retrofitting materials with specific objectives (i) to determine the tensile strength of textile waste layered with epoxy namely textile waste composite (TWC) and, (ii) to determine the optimal configuration of TWC retrofitting on plain concrete beams. The tensile strength of TWC with different layers (1 layer, 2 layers, and 3 layers) was determined by conducting a tensile test. For the TWC retrofitting works, several methods were implemented for the plain concrete beamlets samples i.e., full wrapping, diagonal wrapping, and mesh wrapping. Four -point bending test was conducted to determine the flexural strength of the retrofitted concrete beamlets. The TWC showed promising results on the flexural strength performance of the plain concrete beamlets.