Browsing by Author "Botha, Ayden Dennis"
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- ItemBehaviour of masonry systems incorporating waste plastic subjected to fire(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2020-04) Botha, Ayden Dennis; Walls, Richard Shaun; Babafemi, Adewumi John; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Engineering. Dept. of Civil Engineering.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Plastic waste within the built environment is a global concern, with proportions of waste plastic produced in municipal solid waste being more than 10% by the beginning of the millennium. Within the engineering community, the use of construction materials implementing waste plastics has been a recent development that aims to minimise the effect of plastic waste on the environment. One major concern, however, is that addition of plastics has an unknown impact on the fire response and behaviour of recycled construction products. All structures are required to have a fire rating to quantify the resistance of the structure to a fire event. The unknown response of recycled construction materials to fire has resulted in the investigation of several recycled construction systems within this thesis. Systems that were analysed include Ecobricks (a building block made of a plastic bottle that is filled with plastic infill material), adobe bricks (building units made from natural in-situ soils) and RESIN8 bricks (concrete masonry units with added plastic aggregate replacement). The exposure of each of these systems to a heat source representing a small fire allowed their respective response to fire to be examined, both qualitatively and quantitively, and for observed behaviour to be captured. The adaptation of a newly developed system for fire response testing (Heat Transfer Rate Inducing System or H-TRIS) was employed for the experimentation carried out in this thesis. The system used involved the use of electric radiant panels for means of heating experiments (coined as the eH-TRIS). Samples were subjected to constant heat fluxes of up to 35 kW/m² imparted purely by means of radiative heat transfer, without the effect of the convective zone heating the sample. A qualitative assessment of the behaviour of exposed Ecobricks with the use of video and photographic data was performed, as well as quantitative thermal assessment of the associated adobe protection system. A quantitative analysis of the RESIN8 samples was carried out to determine total mass losses, release of energy as well as total heat release rates for samples of increasing replacement plastic content. In addition, the pre- and post-fire compressive strengths of the RESIN8 samples were determined to quantify the effect of fire on the capacity of brick strength. The use of exposed Ecobricks was found to lead to undesirable fire behaviour, including the presence of flaming droplets, high smoke production and sustained burning immediately after ignition. A significant improvement was observed with the use of adobe, with minimal effects of heat transfer impacting on the system. The replacement content of the RESIN8 samples influenced both smoke production and heat transfer, with high volumes of smoke observed for the highest replacement group. Capacity of the RESIN8 units was also found to drop up to 34.7% of original compressive strength, with heat releases ranging from 291 to 3075 kW with an increase in RESIN8 replacement. The research in this paper aims to act as a spearhead into the topic of these systems, as further research will be required into the many other facets (and additional construction materials) that remain.