Flexural behavior of concrete slabs using treated recycled brick aggregate

The high employment of gravel as “coarse aggregate” in concrete works has expanded considerably owing to the fast growth of structural concrete projects. As a result, the concrete production with the crushed and melted bricks as a appropriate aggregate will challenge countries in the coming years, affecting their economy and sustainability. Compressive strength, tensile strength, and flexural tests were conducted to measure concrete performance to achieve the goals of this research. Surface treatment of Recycled Brick (BR) using sodium metasilicate pentahydrate (Na2SiO3− 5H2O), a silicate solution of recycling crushed brick as coarse aggregate, was performed to check if it is going to improve the properties of concrete. When comparing the Treated Recycled Brick (TBR)-treated samples to the untreated samples, the results showed that the TBR-treated samples performed better. Five reinforced concrete slabs have been performed and tested to study the influences of utilizing recycled bricks on the behaviors of reinforced concrete. Two replacement ratio values of the crushed bricks (50 and 100)% of the total coarse aggregates were used. The results show that crushed brick aggregate as coarse aggregate have a 36-32% concrete compressive strength of about and flexural strength of about (20-17) %, while normal coarse aggregate concrete has a compressive strength of about (36-32) % at 28 days relying on the crushed brick replacement ratio, but when treated recycled bricks improved the compressive strength by 13 percent to 17 percent. The ultimate load with a 50% replacement ratio is 86% of a “reference slab” built with normal gravel. The findings also indicated that the maximum load of entire brick waste concrete was 76 percent of the “ultimate load” of the referencing slab, suggesting that the load rose by roughly 2.2 percent once treated aggregate was applied.