Development and Study of the Strength of Self-Compacting Mortar Mixes Using Local Materials

Concrete is a globally accepted construction material in all types of civil engineering structures. The increase in construction has brought heavy demand for ingredients of concrete such as cement and sand, and these materials are becoming costly and scarce. The cost of cement is also steadily increasing. With ever-increasing environmental problems because of industrial waste products comes a great need to use these products in an appropriate manner to reduce health and environmental problems. Rice husk ash (RHA) and quarry dust (QD) are two such waste materials, the use of which in the production of concrete may prove advantageous in an agriculture-driven economy like the one in India, where rice is a major crop and QD is an abundantly available industrial waste product. This investigation attempts to use RHA and QD as partial replacements for cement and sand, respectively, in developing self-compacting mortar (SCM) mixes. The replacement percentage of cement by RHA varies in the range of 5–20%. On the basis of earlier results, an optimum percentage level of 40% sand replacement by QD is adopted. The compressive strengths of a control SCM mix (without RHA and QD) and compressive strengths of SCM mixes (with RHA and QD) are obtained experimentally at different ages of curing and are compared to assess the viability of adding RHA and QD in SCM mixes.