Reinforcement of cement mortars with additively manufactured fibers in recycled nylon

In the context of sustainable development and utilization of materials, the issue of recycling is of particular interest. Huge amounts of material resources and embodied energy are stored in existing building stocks, oceans and landfill worldwide. In order to reduce the exploitation of further primary resources and energy in the future, such alternative resources have to be effectively available. One of the most hopeful prospects to improve the recycling of materials is to use wastes for the 3D printing process. In the recent past many researchers have developed in-house filament for fused deposition modeling [1]. We study the flexural response of a cementbased mortar reinforced through 3D printed recycled nylon fibers manufactured through an extrusion process of nylon-6 grains obtained from fishing nets. We investigate the tensile behavior of the examined fibers. In addition, we perform compression and bending tests on cement-based mortars reinforced with such fibers to establish comparisons with the experimental behavior of the unreinforced material. We also compare the outcomes of the present study with those obtained in a previous study on the mortar reinforcement with different recycled nylon fibers [2]. The given results highlight the potential environmental and mechanical benefit of employing 3D printed recycled nylon fibers for the reinforcement of sustainable cement-based morta.