Fire resistance of lightweight foam concrete by incorporating lightweight bio-based aggregate

Concrete is widely used in the industry due to its effectiveness in terms of cost and strength. In this study, the introduction of bio-based aggregate as coarse aggregate in lightweight foam concrete will be investigated to find a better solution for fire incidents that are commonly happened. As such, lightweight foam concrete (LWFC) has been applied in many buildings especially in non-load bearing wall to enhance thermal conductivity, sound insulation and fire resistance. The aim of this research is to investigate the effect of incorporating bio-based aggregate namely oil palm shell (OPS) into lightweight form concrete in terms of strength properties and fire resistance. Three different concrete mix was designed containing different percentage of OPS aggregate replacement (0, 5, 10 and 15%). From the result, the compressive strength of the LWFC-CTR mixture had achieved the highest compressive strength at 28-day, which is recorded at 3.82 MPa. The fire resistance of LWFC-OPS 15% had showed a positive outcome with improvement by almost 23.5% compared to control mix at 15 minutes. Therefore, the major finding of this research is the incorporation of eco-friendly OPS aggregate has improved the fire resistance of lightweight foam concrete, which can be used as an alternative solution for non-load bearing walls.