Mechanical Properties of Barchip Polypropylene Fibre-reinforced Lightweight Concrete Made With Recycled Crushed Lightweight Expanded Clay Aggregate

Abstract

Concrete is one of the broadly used construction materials in the construction industry. This research intends to recommend the replacement of conventional coarse aggregates with recycled lightweight expanded clay aggregate (LECA) which offers several advantages such as lightweight, low cost, and easy availability. Lightweight concrete (LWC) offers numerous benefits; therefore, many researchers are using lightweight aggregate to produce lightweight structural composites concrete to compensate heavy loads by reducing the concrete self-weight due to lower density of lightweight concrete, improving in thermal properties and fire resistance, saving the cost of transportation and handling of precast units in the site. Different percentages (0, 0.15, 0.30, and 0.45%) of volume fraction of barchip polypropylene (BPP) fibre have been incorporated to improve the mechanical properties of lightweight aggregate concrete (LWA) concrete. In this study, the mixture of crushed lightweight expanded clay aggregate (CLECA) and barchip polypropylene (BPP) fibre have been used to achieve compressive strength between 28 and 37 MPa at 28-days with an oven-dry density ranged between 1900 and 2000 kg/m3. It is found that the inclusion of BPP fibres at an optimum volume fraction concrete enhances the compressive strength, splitting tensile strength and modulus of rupture. The compressive strength of the lightweight aggregate concrete containing 0.45% volume fraction of BPP fibre (CLLWAC-BPP0.45%) had achieved the highest compressive strength of 37 MPa at 28-days with a significant increment of about 31% compared to plain concrete. Hence, the findings of this research showed that the development of eco-friendly lightweight structural composites can be used as an alternative solution for conventional lightweight concrete, infrastructure and marine fields application.

Comparative Performance of SF, PPF and Hybrid Fiber-Reinforced Self-Compacting Lightweight Concrete under Fire Exposure

“…Echoing these findings, research conducted by Yew et al [3] further elucidated the properties of fresh and hardened concrete with an increased percentage of light expanded clay aggregates replacing conventional aggregates. This work revealed a decrease in concrete density and an enhancement in workability as the replacement percentage increased, albeit at the expense of the compressive, split tensile, and flexural strength of the concrete [3].…”

“…Lightweight expanded clay (LECA) has been extensively employed in numerous studies [2][3][4][5]. An experimental investigation conducted by Sonia and Subashini [2] aimed at partially replacing the coarse aggregate in M25 grade concrete, with the mix design grounded on IS 10262:1982, with LECA.…”

Manufacture of Clay Aggregate Doped with Pozzolan Destined for Lightweight Concrete

“…Clay is one of the most used industrial raw materials, the latest studies on the Miocene marls of Benjalik show an impressive potential, and they have been doped with MnO 2 , Fe 2 O 3 , and Al 2 O 3 [Mesrar et al, 2014[Mesrar et al, , 2021. Conventional concrete is very expensive, and causes irreparable damage to the environment, hence the idea of preparing a thermal insulation material with acceptable mechanical properties [Yew et al, 2021] On the other hand, the marl shrinks with the increase of temperature because the porosity created during the firing enables the gases released by the decomposition of carbonates and organic matter to escape [Allison et al, 1965]. This is why the authors had the idea of adding pozzolan because iron and quartz close the pores of the surface with a phenomenon called vitrification [Akwilapo et al, 2003], to store the gases and obtain the expansion of the aggregates.…”