Initial Approach to a Self-Compacting Concrete with Waste from Crushed Wind Turbine Blade

Abstract

Wind energy has been making its way into renewable energies until today, experiencing a continuous growth worlwide that leads to the urgent task of reflecting on and solving the issue of the recycling of the wind turbine blades. Their complex composition causes that currently there is no a widely acepted solution for it. This study evaluates the incorporation of waste from the crushing of wind turbine blades, which contains fibers, into self-compacting concrete, which can be used for producing any construction element. Therefore, five concrete mixes were made with different percentages of this waste, including a reference mix without this waste. The addition of waste increased the content of fibers in the concrete, which in turn implied an increase in the water/cement ratio. This situation led to a worsening of the mechanical performance of concrete as the waste amount increased, although it was partially compensated by the stitching effect of the fibers. The concrete mix with 1.5% in volume of this waste exhibited flexural and compressive strengths very similar to those of the reference concrete. This shows that incorporating the waste from the crushing of wind turbine blades can allow to produce structural self-compacting concrete.