STRENGTH CHARACTERISTICS OF CONCRETE HAVING CRUSHED BONE AS PARTIAL REPLACEMENT OF FINE AGGREGATES AT DIFFERENT WATER-CEMENT RATIOS

This paper reports the results of investigation to find the effects of water cement ratio on some properties of concrete containing crushed cow bone (CCB) as partial replacement of fine sand. Concrete samples containing 20% CCB as replacement of sand were used. The properties investigated are: workability, density and the compressive strength. Slump test and compacting factor test were used to determine the workability while 150 x 150 x 150 mm cubes were used for density and the compressive strength. The water-cement ratios were 0.4, 0.5 and 0.6. The density and compressive strength specimens were tested at 7, 14, 28, 60, and 90 and 120 days of moist-curing. The results showed that: (i) workability, measured in terms of slump loss, increased with watercement ratios, (ii) compacting factor test may be more appropriate as a tool to assess the workability characteristics of the specimens due to the lower value of the factor, (iii) there are possibilities of producing concretes whose densities fall into more than one density ranges as water-cement ratio is increased, (iv) compressive strengths of the specimens decreased with water-cement ratio.