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Plastic waste arising from medical face masks and gowns is increasingly posing serious environmental challenges for their disposal, necessitating the evolution of innovative and sustainable approaches and solutions. This paper explores a novel and sustainable approach by utilising medical-grade plastic materials, i.e., shredded medical-grade face masks, as fibres in concrete. The experimental campaign evaluates the influence of fibres on the flexural performance of fibre-reinforced concrete (FRC) and the optimal volume fraction of these polypropylene fibres. Concrete specimens with a water-to-cement ( w / c ) ratio of 0.45 and varying fibre volume fractions, ranging between 0% and 1%, were subjected to three-point bending tests according to EN 14651. The experimental results demonstrated a 23% increase in splitting tensile strength and up to 27% improvement in residual strength parameters, while the optimum fibre volume fraction of fibres was found to be 0.5%. This study also integrates experimental findings with the data from previous studies to develop a machine learning (ML)-based sensitivity analysis. Sensitivity analysis using supervised and unsupervised ML methods, incorporating 217 datasets from the literature, identified the water-cement ratio as the most influential parameter for the residual strength of FRC, surpassing fibre type, volume fractions, and aspect ratio.
Marahla et al. (Fri,) studied this question.