PERFORMANCE OF HIGH STRENGTH LIGHTWEIGHT CONCRETE USING PALM WASTES

The performance of high strength structural lightweight concrete (LWC) using the palm wastes, oil palm shell (OPS) as well as palm oil clinker (POC) has been reported. Existing literatures used either OPS or POC individually for production of LWC. Each concept has their own advantages-disadvantages. In this study, both OPS and POC have been put together as coarse aggregate on the way to see the improvement of mechanical properties of waste based LWC. To achieve this purpose, regular coarse aggregate has been fully replaced by OPS and POC in the concrete. This structural grade lightweight concrete is named as palm shell and clinker concrete (PSCC). Attempts have been made with the series of OPS and POC mixture aimed at identifying for better performance. The quantity of OPS and POC mix has been varied as 30%, 40%, 50%, 60% and 70%. Mechanical properties of PSCC like density, workability, compressive strength at different ages, flexural strength, splitting tensile strength as well as modulus of elasticity have been evaluated. It is revealed that the proposed PSCC has extensive potential in terms of high compressive strength and good material behavior to perform as a better LWC. The study could offer structural lightweight concrete of compressive strength up to 46 MPa that is 31% higher than the control mix. The usage of 50% OPS to 50% POC coarse aggregate by vol. in the concrete mix is found to be the optimum mix. Furthermore, simple correlations have been developed which can easily predict compressive strength, splitting tensile strength, flexural strength, modulus of elasticity and ultrasonic pulse velocity of lightweight concrete.