Sustainable use of waste materials in concrete structures

Infra-structural systems consume a majority of national resources and any novelty in their design and construction aspects resulting in saving of materials or time duration of construction will be welcome and if this novelty reflects use of waste materials, a new dimension in terms of ecological sustainability is introduced bringing in double benefits. In India waste materials come from different sources and in different forms beginning with plastic to chemical emissions. Most of the times the waste is rarely put to use and in this paper, introduction of a new kind of structural elements like hollow beams with waste plastic or pvc materials used as balls-called BUBBLE BEAMS- is attempted and the focus of the current study is in assessing its structural behaviour. Beams are predominant elements in a structural skeleton, in a building which transmit dead and live loads acting on it to the vertical framing system. Many research have been conducted to reduce the concrete weight of the structural beam. BUBBLE BEAM provides one possible solution. This paper deal with the design of bubble beam, location of bubble, spacing of bubble, shear resistance, load carrying capacity of bubble beam and non linear dynamic analysis of bubble beam. © 2011 IEEE.