Adding fibers to concrete helps enhance its tensile strength and ductility. Synthetic fibres are preferable to steel ones which suffer from corrosion that reduces their functionality with time. More consideration is given to synthetic fibres as they can be sourced from waste plastics and their incorporation in concrete is considered a new recycling pathway. Thus, this work investigates the potential engineering benefits of a pioneering application using extruded macro polyfibres in concrete. Two different fiber dosages, 4 kg/m³ and 6 kg/m³, were used to investigate their influence based on several physical, mechanical and microstructural tests, including workability, compressive strength, modulus of elasticity, splitting-tensile strength, flexural test, CMOD, pull-out test and porosity. The test results revealed a slight decrease in the workability of the fibre-reinforced concrete, while all the mechanical and microstructural properties were enhanced significantly. It was observed that the compressive, splitting tensile and bonding strength of the concrete with 6 kg/m³ fibre dosage increased by 19.4%, 41.9% and 17.8% compared to the plain concrete specimens, respectively. Although there was no impact of the fibres on the modulus of rupture, they significantly increased the toughness, resulting in a progressive type of failure instead of the sudden and brittle type. Moreover, the macroporosity was reduced by the fibre addition, thus increasing the concrete compressive strength. Finally, simplified empirical formulas were developed to predict the mechanical properties of the concrete with fibre addition. The outcome of this study will help to increase the implementation of the recycled plastic waste in concrete mix design and promote a circular economy in the waste industry.

Interest in the use of natural fibres as an alternative for artificial fibres in polymer composite manufacturing is increasing for various engineering applications. Their suitability for use in outdoor environments should be demonstrated due to their perceived hydrophilic behaviour. This study investigated the water absorption behaviour of hybrid flax fibre-reinforced epoxy composites with 0%, 0.5%, 1% and 1.5% graphene by weight that were immersed in water for 1000, 2000, and 3000 h. The flexural and interlaminar shear strength before and after immersion in water was then evaluated. The results showed that graphene nanoparticles improved the mechanical properties of the composites. The moisture absorption process of hybrid natural fibre composites followed the Fickian law, whereas the addition of graphene significantly reduced the moisture absorption and moisture diffusion, especially for hybrid composites with 1.5% graphene. However, the flexural and ILSS properties of the composites with and without graphene decreased with the increase in the exposure duration. The flexural strength of hybrid composites with 0%, 0.5%, 1% and 1.5% graphene decreased by 32%, 11%, 17.5% and 13.4%, respectively, after exposure for 3000 h. For inter-laminar shear strength at the same conditioning of 3000 h, hybrid composites with 0.5%, 1% and 1.5% graphene also decreased by 13.2%, 21% and 17.5%, respectively, compared to the dry composite’s strength. The specimens with 0.5% graphene showed the lowest reduction in strength for both the flexural and interlaminar tests, due to good filler dispersion in the matrix, but all of them were still higher than that of flax fibre composites. Scanning electron microscope observations showed a reduction in voids in the composite matrix after the introduction of graphene, resulting in reduced moisture absorption and moisture diffusion.

Natural fibers are now becoming widely adopted as reinforcements for polymer matrices to produce biodegradable and renewable composites. These natural composites have mechanical properties acceptable for use in many industrial and structural applications under ambient temperatures. However, there is still limited understanding regarding the mechanical performance of natural fiber composites when exposed to in-service elevated temperatures. Moreover, nanoparticle additives are widely utilized in reinforced composites as they can enhance mechanical, thermal, and physical performance. Therefore, this research extensively investigates the interlaminar shear strength (ILSS) and flexural properties of flax fiber composites with graphene at different weight percentages (0%, 0.5%, 1%, and 1.5%) and exposed to in-service elevated temperatures (20, 40, 60, 80, and 100 °C). Mechanical tests were conducted followed by microscopic observations to analyze the interphase between the flax fibers and epoxy resin. The results showed that a significant improvement in flexural strength, modulus, and interlaminar shear strength of the composites was achieved by adding 0.5% of graphene. Increasing the graphene to 1.0% and 1.5% gradually decreased the enhancement in the flexural and ILSS strength. SEM observations showed that voids caused by filler agglomeration were increasingly formed in the natural fiber reinforced composites with the increase in graphene addition.

Alternative sleeper technologies have been developed to address the significant need for the replacement of deteriorating timber railway sleepers. The review of the literature indicates that the railway sleepers might fail while in service, despite passing the evaluation tests of the current composite sleeper standards which indicated that these tests do not represent in situ sleeper on ballast. In this research, a new five-point bending test is developed to evaluate the flexural behaviour of timber replacement sleeper technologies supported by ballast. Due to the simplicity, acceptance level of evaluation accuracy and the lack of in-service behaviour of alternative sleepers, this new testing method is justified with the bending behaviour according to the Beam on Elastic Foundation theory. Three timber replacement sleeper technologies—plastic, synthetic composites and low-profile prestressed concrete sleepers in addition to timber sleepers—were tested under service loading condition to evaluate the suitability of the new test method. To address the differences in the bending of the sleepers due to their different modulus of elasticities, the most appropriate material for the middle support was also determined. Analytical equations of the bending moments with and without middle support settlement were also developed. The results showed that the five-point static bending test could induce the positive and negative bending moments experienced by railway sleepers under a train wheel load. It was also found that with the proposed testing spans, steel-EPDM rubber is the most suitable configuration for low bending modulus sleepers such as plastic, steel-neoprene for medium modulus polymer sleepers and steel-steel for very high modulus sleepers such as concrete. Finally, the proposed bending moment equations can precisely predict the flexural behaviour of alternative sleepers under the five-point bending test.

Sand contaminated with crude oil is becoming a major environmental issue around the world, while at the same time, fly ash generated by coal-fired power stations is having a detrimental effect on the environment. Previous studies showed that combining these two waste materials can result in an environmentally sustainable geopolymer concrete. Incorporating sand contaminated with crude oil up to a certain level (4% by weight) can improve the mechanical properties of the produced geopolymer concrete but beyond this level can have a detrimental effect on its compressive strength. To overcome this challenge, this study introduces short fibres to enhance the mechanical properties of geopolymer mortar containing fine sand contaminated with 6% by weight of light crude oil. Four types of short fibres, consisting of twisted polypropylene (PP) fibres, straight PP fibres, short glass fibres and steel fibres in different dosages (0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5% by volume of geopolymer mortar) are considered. The optimum strength was obtained when straight PP fibres were used wherein increases of up to 39% and 74% of the compressive and tensile strength, respectively, of the geopolymer mortar were achieved. Moreover, a fibre dosage of 0.5% provided the highest enhancement in the mechanical properties of the geopolymer mortar with 6% crude oil contamination. This result indicates that the reduction in strength of geopolymer due to the addition of sand with 6% crude oil contamination can be regained by using short fibres, making this new material from wastes suitable for building and construction applications.