Study about concrete with recycled expanded polystyrene

Abstract This work studied the properties of lightweight concretes with addition of expanded polystyrene (EPS) for structural walls applications. EPS for being a material produced on a large scale and has low density, produces a large volume of waste. These residues are not reused, especially in Brazil. Given that, in order to perform a comparison of the performance of concrete with adding of EPS in pearls and recycled, it have been manufactured five concrete types, a control without addition of EPS and four other samples with two different percentages of EPS. The mechanical (compressive strength) and physical (density, voids content, absorption by immersion and capillarity) properties were evaluated, and tests were carried out to evaluate the thermal performance of the mixtures studied. The concretes with EPS presented compressive strength less than the reference concrete, however, the absorption for capillarity and thermal properties was better in concretes with EPS. It is concluded that it is feasible to replace the EPS in pearls by recycled EPS, due to the close results found.